So .... we're birdie people in my family. I've had birds my whole life, mostly of the psittacine (parrot/hookbill) variety, although my first pet ever, at the age of three, was one of my grandmother's bantam chickens.
Hubby and daughter have become pros at the birds too, and we currently have nine, ranging in size from a budgie to cockatiels, conures, a ringneck, and three red-bellied parrots. All but two of the nine are rescues/re-homes/rehabs/runt-of-the-litter.
No fears though, we are not hoarders
. Our bird cages line our dining/living rooms so they're at the center of family life, all have their "favorite human", all get regular visits to an avian specialist vet, and since I've been a stay-at-home for years, they all have plenty of playtime outside their cages. So yeah, nine is a lot, but as I said, most are rescues, and when we have "room at the inn", we're always willing to take in the next. (If curious, many of them are entered into the "rescues" thread in the Animalicious sub-forum here.)
So anyway, a couple weeks ago our elderly lovebird (a re-home we had for five years), had a stroke and passed.
It's always a shock to the system, but given that Christmas was coming and we "had room at the inn", we stopped by our favorite bird supply place. (What I mean is, we knew we would take a rescue if they had one, and with Christmas coming we wouldn't want it sitting in the shop over the holiday. Get it home with the family.)
They do sell hand-raised young ones (screening the potential buyers), but they're also well-known as a safe place to "drop off" birds that need new homes. Well, they had a very young budgie who was found outside, in the neighboring city on Thanksgiving Day. Lost and found messages went out but no one claimed her, so we were asked to take her. Our daughter named her Christabel as a play on "Christmas Bells". It's been a looooong time since I had a budgie, but there we are.
In the midst of all this, we finally, *
finally* got down to KOP for daughter's favorite shopping trip of the holidays. We met up with tpf-er
@chowlover2 down there, she gave daughter a lovely vintage
Coach Madison Spence bag (which I've posted here:
https://forum.purseblog.com/threads...-reveal-thread.856379/page-1504#post-33515016 ).
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd, I picked up a Kurt Geiger 'birdie' bag at
Nordstrom. ...
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I've seen them here on tpf on occasion, and given our birds, how could I *not* get one??? I went with the metallic leather, rainbow, "mini Kensington". I admit it's a bit bright for some occasions, but for evenings out, or college theater shows, Shakespeare festival, things like that, I'll mix it in with my other small bags. And I especially wanted the multicolor, because I actually do have feathers from our birds in almost every color in this bag. The only color I don't have in feather form is pink, but I don't see us with a rose-breasted or Moluccan cockatoo anytime soon.
The bag's first outing was today, for Christabel's first vet visit.
And funnily, this is how the bills worked out:
Christabel: free
1 lb Zupreme "mini" pellets (Miss mini-parrot here, will need the mini size): $5
Kurt Geiger birdie bag: $165
Cinnamon's (lovebird) autopsy, cremation, and donation we make to the vet's wildlife fund on events like this: $380
Christabel's first vet visit (with bloodwork): $322
I just find that list amusing ... when the bag is so dwarfed. Perhaps other tpf'ers can see the irony as well. I remind myself of this often -- it's not actually bags that eat the budget.
(And yes, budgies should have vet checks and bloodwork just like any other parrot.)
And here's our Christmas arrival ... (daughter is working on finger training her)
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