See Ya in Hell Jerry!! Is it Safe to Eat Yet? More Baby Birds....

This is my boyfriend, Henry. He lives at the bird store as their pet...Indeed, spring brings out the romance in a young guy's heart, and Henry has decided that I am sweet. I know its a ruse so that he can snap me in two with that big beak of his, as he has tried before...but, he has drawn me into his trap with his head turned down for neck scratches and all that purring, upchucking of food, and holding his huge taloned hand up for me to pick him up (ha!...yeah right!)...
I am such a sucker for all that sweet talk...


























At last God has worked his way through the virtual Netflix backup of what his "servants" have been up to down here, and upon viewing the hijinx of his servant Jerry, he has immediately removed him from this planet in the hopes of giving us some shot at healing this country's horribly damaged psyche. Oh, some out there will blame the gays and some will blame the druggies, but this is clearly a case of karma coming back around...Good riddance Jerry...I will not shed one tear for you and your filthy mind that would take every nice thing about the Christian sensibility and wring it of any humanity, turn it upside down, and spew it out as some sort of bastardized truth, to an under educated and scared flock who deserve better than the likes of you as a teacher and spiritual leader! What an absolutely ugly person...rotten from the inside out!

Seeing the likes of Rudy Guilliani and John McCain eulogize Falwell makes me just want to post this again:



I'm so tired of liars....power hungry, money grubbing, self righteous, jerks, who would sell out any basic American value in their climb to some imagined pinnacle of power or wealth. And I really hope, for Jerry especially, that there is an afterlife and a God there that is sitting in judgment of people like him...and I hope that he is sweating out the hearing of his life.(..Be sure to save Rudy and Johnny Mac a seat Jer...they'll be joining you.)

Its been a week of playing catch up for me, and the overflow of the water table in this part of the world has caused an incredible tree pollen season (not to mention the mosquitoes,) so Ive been in a daze from that, or the medicine for that, while watching the idyllic spring appear magically as the world greens up and the little frogs go into overdrive in deafening song every night.
Will and Ben have been hanging out, skipping rocks at the pond, catch and releasing peepers, and making s'mores at the fire pit. Its a very different childhood than I had, and its so nice as to almost feel uncomfortable to me...constantly looking up for the shadow of the other shoe...dropping...
















Among other things, I've been continuing on the Chinese plastics trail, and trying to figure out if its safe yet to feed the animals, much less myself and the kids....The conclusion does not look too good.
See, I've got this view of the situation at this point where, by the time we have enslaved the Chinese and upset their cultural curve in order to turn them into worker bees for our light (aka plastics, etc...) industries...and also as we build everything to break, out of plastic that is getting weaker and cheaper every year, to ensure that we will have to replace the plastics overflowing our lives over and over...the natural next step is the infusion of plastics into our food and bodies which will then, when combined with the myriad other chemicals that have infused our world, sicken and even kill us. I'm sure that somewhere soon the music from Children of Men will swell and Clive Owen will burst into the room babbling something about infertility caused by.....

Now, I know that the FDA says not to worry our pretty little heads about all of this, but melamine has caused tumors in mice and rats and sickened and killed dogs and cats. There are NO studies being presented that show that this stuff, even in small doses, is safe for humans. So I would prefer to avoid it as a primary additive in say, imported Chinese products that might be used by the local Chinese restaurant, or secondarily in meats that have been fed with feed using Chinese wheat, rice, or whatever protein. It seems to be in everything; fish food, possibly vitamins made in china, the list goes on...and definitely looking at dog treats such as dried pig ears and rawhide that are made in China, there is going to be a great, huge chance that melamine is going to be present. As I've said before, without so much as a class action threat, Menu Foods is paying vet bills for pets sickened by the melamine contained in their now recalled foods....when has any of us ever, ever seen a big corporation like that just pay up of their own accord?...so quietly, so quickly...? It indicates to me that this thing runs alot deeper than they want any investigation to get.
But the bigger question is not just about melamine, but the whole damned food chain and the clear fact that deregulation has not worked, large corporations cannot be trusted to police themselves, and that the savings due to outsourcing which surely in a different world would have been applied to heightened security in the face of increased imports have been funneled into the bank accounts of the CEO's and top management types. How much money does any one person or family need at the expense of the health and safety of others around the world?
So, secure in the knowledge that the CEO's of Hills and Menu etc... have provided for the next 5 generations of their families, can we now spend a little money on the feed that the protein components are built on?...what a crock of shit this whole story is!
So, yeah, I expect that its in human foods, along with all sorts of assorted toxins.
And the predictable thing about all of this is that upon further testing, other problems were found, like salmonella in some dried chicken treats...
Hows that deregulation and globalization working now? Who is benefiting and who is getting hurt? Follow the money....

So, on the trail for dog foods that are made with American fed, humanely treated protein sources, also known as animals. The pet food store manager that Ive known for quite a few years told me that the companies are all scrambling as to what to say and how to handle what information they have or dont have, as the case may be. And Ive been writing to different pet food companies and reading lots of web pages, only to get mere partial answers, which indicates to me that the companies themselves might not know the full story on the protein sources anyway.
What I've found is that Paul Newman's, Newman's Own Brand is made of organic ingredients and purely American fed and humanely treated animals. It says this on their web site and the pet food store manager knew this right away. There is also a more fancy brand called Canidae that is also along those lines.

I tried to get information on any number of other foods and the replies I got were very spotty and vague, such as this from Timberwolf:

They (sic) chicken is of human grade, raised in the U.S., though we can not officially call it that since we do not pay additional for the USDA stamp of approval. The Bison is American free range. The Venison and Lamb is from New Zealand and is hormone and antibiotic free.

But I had asked them what the animals were fed. Any subcontracting farmer can cut corners by buying Chinese feed or Chinese protein. I wrote them back, but the reply above took a week, so I'm not hopeful. Anyway....I'm sure this is boring to non-pet people, but we all have to look at this as a much bigger problem that stretches into the human food chain.













This is a little finch that my friend Sheryl found in her parking garage. It seems that some kids had been smoking down there and were messing with some active nests, and then these 2 eggs with full term chicks appeared next to Sheryl's car, with no nests nearby. The one little egg baby was dead, but this little guy was wriggling round and opening its little mouth looking for food. This, even though it was stone cold. I took it, wrapped it up and put it in a little container and rushed it to the bird store where Todd put it in the incubator so at least it would warm up a bit. I was so sure that it was going to die, but last I heard it was being carted around with the other very young babies and being fed....I keep thinking that its probably gonna die...but at least if it does it will have a full tummy and be warm when it does.
Thats my spring miracle.
As of today I haven't had any luck with my Conure eggs hatching, but Im only on day 25 of egg # 2, so Ive got 4 other possibilities in there, and would be happy to get even one live one....oh well, its early and there are more clutches in the future....