Sleep cages!

It doesn't look like I posted about this last summer when I bought them, but due to the fact that I am living in an apartment and wanted to not get kicked out due to the parrots awakening with the sun, I bought them sleep cages.  Their normal cages are too big for me to properly cover, so this was my solution.

I was a little worried about how they would take to them, but they all love them!  I was also a little worried about putting them together myself, but I am discovering new skills of assembly I never had to use before.

Since they each get a cashew before bed, after they go into their sleep cages, Max will actually climb down and go into hers by herself.  She also knows to open the door on the caiques' cages (I don't latch them when they are unoccupied) to see if either caique left some cashew uneaten.  Occasionally, she is rewarded for this thoroughness.

Here's Beeps:

Max:

And Calypso:

I cover them, so it's dark, which allows me to keep things quiet until I wake them up.

During the day, when they are out with me, they like to play on the cages.  Calypso spent quite a while trying to rip up the cage paper through the grate today.  The reason I went to grab my camera is that Beeps actually went into this cage with Calypso on top.  I had hoped to get a picture of that, but he'd flown back to his cage by the time I returned with the camera.

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In unrelated news, the offer I put in on the house was accepted!  The inspection is on Wednesday May 1, and if all goes well, I will be the owner of a fabulous Victorian -- my dream house -- by June 15.  I'm going to try to remember to take some pictures on Wednesday so I can post them here.

This is all so exciting.  I can't wait to have a guest bedroom.  And, my dad asked if I would be interested in brewing beer with him once I have a house.  That's a hobby that Thomas and I shared, and I'd given it up once I was alone.  Now that I'll have a bigger kitchen, I can't wait to brew with my dad!

Clean-up

One of Thomas's beers had a bit of an explosion in the primary fermenter.  It wasn't a huge deal, but just provided him with a bit of a mess to clean up before work, and now our house smells a bit hoppy.

Of course, the greys had to walk in to see what was going on.  They are very nosy.

Max must have gotten a little too close to the action, as evidenced here:

Of course, as soon as she landed, she was right in Thomas's business again.  He said he could have cleaned up more quickly without them, but I reminded him it wouldn't have been as fun.

Max and Stella

We got our first box from our spring CSA last week.  Of course the curious greys had to check out stuff they hadn't seen before:

We also did some bottling of beer.  We were hoping the greys would just stay on their stands, but of course that didn't happen.

Here, Max is attempting to tip over the sample from this batch as Stella tries to get to a dark place to nest:

Then, Max started doing strange things to the bottles that were waiting to be filled:

Later, we'd taken out supplies to start making dinner; Stella had to insert herself into this as well:

After dinner, Thomas made his dessert and left it unattended for a minute.  No surprise what happened next, though a bit surprising that they were getting along so well:

Brewmaster

Thomas had purchased 5 gallons of apple cider that he's in the process of turning into hard cider. Stella was obsessed with these bottles! She kept standing by them, talking to them, etc. I told Thomas he had an assistant, but he didn't think she'd be very helpful.  He was right.

Food investigations

Max continues in her role of having to investigate everything in the house:I doubt that Stella would have come over to do this had she not seen Max first. It's a good thing Max is wonderful since Stella is such a copy cat and I shudder to think what my life would have been like should she have chosen to emulate Rocky instead! Two Maxes -- even ten Maxes -- I can handle. One Rocky just about drives me over the edge!
I told her the tea was hot -- you can still see the steam coming off -- but she still had to check it out:
She grabbed a piece of corn and then flew to the table to eat it in peace:Thomas was brewing over the weekend when his thermometer broke. Being resourceful, he used the thermometer we use to regulate our lizards' tanks:
He's making a barely wine with cherries added to the mash. I'm not sure how I feel about that, and it will be several months until we can taste how it turned out.