Lord of the Rings

Anyone who's ever had a bird will know how much personality these tiny creatures can have; we certainly never tire of watching Pippin and his many tricks. If we don't come downstairs early enough for him in the morning, he calls and calls until we appear; he then settles into the contented twittering (which often sounds rather like R2 D2) which is his natural state for much of the time. If he hasn't got people to talk to, he'll talk to the boiling kettle, or the frying bacon, or sing along with music - he especially loves the Stones, INXS, and Lovers Electric - so really he just loves to talk.

His main obsession at present, however, is with a set of plastic rings we hung in his cage some weeks back. At first he ignored them and I thought of taking them out again; however, he soon realised that there was a bell hanging at the bottom of them, and it became his life's work to remove it...

He also loves the little plastic balls that hang around on the bottom of the cage; for some reason he takes umbrage at them being moved elsewhere - such as to the top of the ladder - and will hop over and toss them down, usually within about five seconds of them being placed there. He'll then throw them around on the floor, with his beak or his foot, until he remembers that he still hasn't removed the bell from the bottom of the rings, and returns for another go at it.

Pippin just loves Dave, and if he sees him passing the cage will often call until Dave stops to talk to him, and rub his belly through the bars.



We hope that one day he'll be tame enough to come out of the cage and fly around the house; not quite yet though.

Sunday morning

Thanks to Tom for the pancake recipe; we make it most weekends.

Batten down the hatches!

The last few days the news here has been full of Tropical Storm Edouard, with lots of advice about how to prepare for its imminent arrival... I think perhaps people in this part of the world are still a bit hurricane-happy, after Katrina a few years ago (and there's still some memory of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which caused pretty massive damage, and killed about 1800 people).

Anyway, here's our hurricane weather:

Lots of rain, no wind at all... it was a little scarier last night, when a storm passed right over head - loads of lightning and thunder, getting closer and closer together as the storm neared, but surprisingly little rain... today's been quite pleasant, really, and this way we won't have to put the sprinklers out for a day or two!