This ones for the bird(s)!

This one's for a very special bird!

Besides the fact that I have two dogs I am not typically a person that LOVES animals.( I do love my dogs, most days.)
I have been thinking a lot about this blog entry and wishing that there wasn't a reason to compel me to do it. However, I am happy to share with you the love my family has for this one very small and very intelligent bird! This birds name is Dodger. He belongs to my friend. We've gotten to know Dodger through visits to my friends house and through the times we've been lucky enough to baby sit him. He is SO smart. He knows what makes him happy. He has a very nice cage with fun things to entertain him AND he has an open door policy. His cage door is always open(oh, but not when it's bed time). He loves to stand at the door opening and watch the world happen around him. He'll walk up and down the ladder and play with his medicine shakers. He loves his medicine shakers! That's one of my kids favorite things about Dodger. They shake his medicine bottle and Dodger 'talks' back. Dodger loves his owner! I have seen him many times fly out of his cage and land on her head and squawk at her, trying to tell her whats on his mind. In the mornings he gets to go into the bathroom and eat crushed up Triscuits on the mirrors edge while she gets ready for the day. How lucky. Whenever she goes out of town (which isn't really often) she wants to make sure that Dodger is happy where he is being babysat. There have been a few times he got left somewhere where they wouldn't leave his door open or give him the attention HE wanted and would seem depressed when she picked him up. Bragging aside, whenever he came to our house he was happy. His door was always left open, he never had to work very hard to get the kids attention, and he was found many a time flying around the house... And happy to let us pick him up and hold him before it was time to go back to the cage. :) this is going on and on, I know. But I want to do this right! He really is an incredible bird! We love him!
Isn't funny how we learn to get through tuff times in life? This has been such a week for my kids! We found out that our dear friend Dodger has a Cancerous Tumor and will not be with us for much longer. How interesting that my kids should learn about death and dying from a bird first, but I hope they will remember there is life after death and that death is part of living. I hope they learn that it's ok to feel sad, that that's part of the grieving process.


We love you Dodger!