FaceBird

The morning usually starts with a cup of coffee, checking surf conditions on-line then the early dog walk. One morning last month on our return leg I saw a parakeet in the middle of the street and before it could be picked up a black GM SUV clipped it. The little fellow was still alive but didn't last long after the trip home. It has been a while since we have had a pet other that the dog, and dogs eat birds unless the bird is large enough to fight back as our pet crow did.

After a month of indecision on rather to buy another bird the decision was made to buy two budgies (as the other English speaking say). My father used to raise birds and my grandparents had a walk in aviary in their backyard, so it must be in the DNA. My grandmother even had a pet crow. For those who have never fallen into the trap of bird ownership, parakeets are small parrots that have flown in Australia for about five million years and are very social animals. They need attention and if their social life starts to lack they begin pulling out their feathers.

Parakeets can learn to talk and once my father described to me how to teach one but never have a successful talker been my reward. Males are more likely to talk than females and a pair would rather talk to each other so getting this pair conversing in English might take a long time. My first addition to their new home was to add listening of classical music on KUSC-FM radio for them.

Parakeets also need lots of sunshine so they have a cage next to the window which is next to my laptop. After googling around about bird voice lessons the discovery was made that talking birds are quite popular on YouTube. When the pair of gaol birds heard their distant cousins singing on YouTube they became highly active and returned each squawk or whistle back with what seemed to be an appropriate response.

My laptop came with camera gadget but not working software and I have no idea if it has a microphone. My hand me down cell phone has a full keyboard but the gaol birds are too young to start texting and they need not fall into the trap of texting every other minute the teenage mutants that reside around here do. So I need to find a social network where they can tweeter away the day and then the thought came to me that maybe I could start a "FaceBird" where they could contact Friends and share cooking hints, baby pictures, vacation plans, and what soap operas they are watching, find other birds that share the same interest, wine list and preference for imported beers and how many shooters of expensive Mexican cactus juice it takes to fall off the perch.

Right now the search for a venture capitalist interested in financing software for developing an aviary interface is my biggest hurdle and that actual work maybe involved has lessened my efforts.

But Rome wasn't built in a day and maybe my FaceBird will be on the Fortune 100 soon and the gaol birds can start to pay rent.