short takes

[cellio]

Bruce Schneier has an excellent essay on what the terrorists want. Excerpt: The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer. (I think I got this from goldsquare.)

On a lighter note...

I found myself wondering the other day about wisdom teeth. What's the connection between teeth and mental acuity, and what does it mean that most of us end up having them pulled out at some point? Do wisdom teeth grant wisdom, or consume it?

Tonight Dani and I drove past a (closed) store called "Bird Bath". This seems rather specialized for the amount of real estate involved. I suggested a garden shop that, perhaps to stay in business, also sells fountains and planters. Dani proposed an avian spa. I kind of like that: imagine your songbird or parrot in an itty bitty jaccouzi, maybe with a shampoo and grooming -- maybe even massage and pedicure. Would the bath end with itty bitty blow dryers, do you think? Or would feathers respond better to towels and time?

From the Dilbert blog (lost the actual entry link, sorry): Allow me to explain the business model of a cruise ship. When you set sail, the ship has a billion tons of food and a few thousand humans. The cruise company's objective is to end the cruise with something on the order of one leftover cupcake and a billion tons of feces. I'm fairly certain that if that goal is not met, a busboy from Mozambique is thrown overboard as a warning to the other crew members. We ate our share just to make sure Pooka Muuwa was safe.

Comments

Wisdom Teeth

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

Wisdom teeth start coming in late in life. You're supposed to be wiser then.

The human brain doesn't stop growing and building the impulse control sections until sometime around 25. Until that time, everyone's more or less brain damaged.

Interestingly, the area seems to retreat somewhat when puberty hits. Pre-puberty kids have better self-control than they will when they're hormone crazed, independant from the hormones.

Humans are built strange.

Re: Wisdom Teeth

[cellio]

Humans are built strange.

Yup! Thanks for the comment. (Can you address dagonell's question below?)

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Except for being off by a few orders of magnitude on the food and feces, that sounds like the cruise business model. We saw a housekeeping staffer from El Salvador being sacrificed to the waves as we were pulling back into port. :-)

[cellio]

With cupcakes in hand, saying "I'm eating as fast as I can!"? :-)

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Cupcakes? As if! Think "steak," young lady. :-)

[cellio]

I thought you would have taken care of all the steak. :-)

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Even I have my limits. :-)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

I thought your not supposed to use soaps on feathers. The detergents remove necessary oils, hence the need for Penguin Sweaters. Or is this an over-generalization of a specific case?
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

I have no idea -- never had a pet bird. Ok, no bubblebath -- instead, scented oils. :-)

Parrot Jacuzzi?

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

I guess I thought of this in terms of a pet parrot; I can't imagine a wild parrot going anywhere near a parrot jacuzzi. Australia's mountain parrot, the Kea, will gladly tear your car apart, but should you put something out for them to use, my experience with parrots leads me to believe they'd studiously avoid it.

As a general rule, one does not soap birds. If you have an arctic bird covered in BP crude from their horrid and criminal mismanagement of their pipelines, well, you're going to have to wash them with soap and water -- and then deal with the lack of avian oils on the feathers that produce waterproofing. Turned loose, the birds will get wet and freeze. Even the insulating factor is decreased, hence the need to produce little sweaters for these birds for them to wear while they recuperate.

The oil has another function. It is rich in a vitamin D precursor. This is the same sort of vitamin D precursor humans need sunlight to activate. Birds aren't going to lie on their backs with their feet in the air sunning themselves. So they spread the oil on themselves, it gets activated by light, and as they preen themselves, they ingest enough oil to get the vitamin D they need.

Not all parrots use oils to waterproof. Budgerigars (Americans call them parakeets) use oils that come from the oils are, but galah cockatoos and cockatiels (also from Australia) tend to be very dusty. The sheathing of new feathers disintigrates into a powder that serves as a waterproof lubricant. Chauncey, our Moluccan cockatoo, is amazingly waterproof. I can take him in the shower, and it takes a serious effort to get him wet and cut down on the dust. I do not use soap.

Avian dust is not good for humans to breathe. Wear a mask when cleaning the cage, or dampen the cage paper with a spray bottle before changing.

Birds are far more sensitive to chemicals than humans. In reality, I'd skip the shampoo in the birdie Jacuzzi (reality? birdie Jacuzzi?).

If your pet bird does come in contact with something that needs to be washed out, I'd recommend a very simple soap like Johnson's Baby Shampoo (hypoallergenic, unscented if they sell it). Use the minimum amount necessary, affect the least area possible, and if you have to cover more than a small area on the bird, make an emergency vet visit for the bird. Don't let the bird become chilled. Their immune systems aren't the greatest, and any stress is considered a risk. If the bird has watched you use a hair dryer, they will accept this, possibly with some holding by a second person.

If a wild bird needs to be washed, get it to an avian rehabber. Amazingly little parrot training transfers over to wild American birds. The bird needs someone specialized. The rehabber may give you emergency instructions. Listen to them.

When our birds eat beets, we let the stained feathers be stained. I freak the first couple times I see the bloody face feathers, but I get used to it. They clean the feathers fairly quickly -- in the case of face feathers, they're obviously preening each other or wiping their faces on objects in their environment.

Feces can be carefully washed off a sick bird or a bird that made the mistake of being below a nesting female (Birds normally poop every 20 minutes; females might leave the nest a couple times a day. They hold in between times. Do the math.). Parrots will sometimes eat their own feces to get more intestinal bacteria or more nourishment out of their food, so it's not like there's any need to worry about getting rid of the bacteria. Washing with simple tepid (maybe slightly warm to you -- the bird's body temp is about 105F) water. Wash your own hands thorougly after handling avian feces, though.

NEVER dye your bird. If they happen to get some beet stain on them, no problem. But there's a case history of a cockatoo that was dyed with Easter-egg dye by the family teen. The dye couldn't be washed out well, and the bird began ripping it's feathers out, and then gouging it's own flesh. Eventually, the animal had to be put down and the teen wound up needing psychotherapy to deel with the guilt.

I'd skip the scented oils, too.

Typo in parent

[rob-of-unspace.livejournal.com]

Typo:

Budgerigars (Americans call them parakeets) use oils that come from the oils are,


should be:

Budgerigars (Americans call them parakeets) use oils that come from the oil gland,