Just a little bit of Wishful Thinking...
Or, this is as good of a way as any to begin the New Year...

I've got Parakeets; 4 of them, to be exact. I got four of them because if one gets tired of the other, there are two others it can play with. They squabble like little kids sometimes, but I've put plenty of little bird-toys in the cage to keep them happy. I've found two things that Parakeets really like...they love to be sprayed with water mist from a squirt bottle. Maybe on a subconscious level, it reminds parakeets of long-ago times when their ancestors were wild in the jungle, bathing in the warm jungle rain. One of the 'keets actually climbs up on the side of the cage where I can spray him directly. I usually do that in the middle of the day so that they're dry well before the cooler temperatures of nightfall occur. The second thing they go wild about is broccoli. They love the stuff. I scatter bits and pieces of it on the cage floor, making sure there's enough for everybody, and at times, all four of them are munching and crunching broccoli-bits. I guess a few pieces of broccoli is a big deal if you're a parakeet.

So anyway, I'm corresponding with a guy who sold me some albums over Ebay way back when; he makes CD's for his friends, just like I do, and he sent me a whole bunch of Beatles' bootleg albums for my collection, and all I had to do was dub them over to CD for him since he didn't have a way to put vinyl onto compact disc. He's also quite politically cynical, and we both think President Bush is basically an idiot, or corrupt, or both. So, in one e-mail, Joe got around to talking about his pet cats; I told him I had parakeets, and that led to his conjuring up the image of a "Bush-keet". Silly, yeah, but hey, life is dull if yer serious all the time, right?

Long ago, back in the days when a band didn't need hit singles in order to get a recording contract, a British band, "Budgie" had several albums released here in the states, and since 'Budgie' is how the Brits refer to parakeets (it's slang for the name 'Budgerigar'), pictures of parakeets adorn the various "Budgie" albums that came out way back when. So where is this post going? So far, it hasn't interconnected...but don't worry, I'm getting to the point...when Joe came up with "Bush-keet", well, I ruminated upon that for a while, and couldn't resist doing the following Really Dumb Thing:

First, here's the cover of Budgie's "Impeckable" (peck, get it?) album...

And now, here's the same album cover, slightly revised. Wishful thinking, for sure.

Other Budgie albums feature parakeets clad in suits of armor and riding horses, or flying in outer space complete with space suits and glass space helmets, and the funniest Budgie album title is "in for the kill". As though parakeets were menacing creatures. Well, they can be sometimes, especially the one destructive parakeet I have who keeps pulling a seed cup from the side of the cage and unceremoniously dumps it on the floor. Grrrrrr! So I'm always trying new ways to 'parakeet-proof' the cage. It ain't easy. I'll think to myself, "those ungrateful birds; I put food out for them and look what they do", and that's when I have to tell myself that a parakeet has, on average, about a 2-minute memory span. So it's useless to yell at them unless you catch them in the act of destroying something. Bad parakeet! Bad, baaaad parakeet!
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So, in part, that's how I spent the first couple of hours in 2007...I mean, 2008. Gotta get used to this being a New Year. An indulgence in unabated foolishness, for sure. But...I would venture to say that a "Bush-keet" would be a quite unfortunate genetic mutation. Can you imagine that...really dumb birds that run head-on into each other when flying...duh........