Remembering Raspy: Lost video

Some time ago, I used the webcam a lot to watch my feathery friends whilst I was in the office.  I would just check in for a few seconds, at intervals, to make sure all looked normal.  This was invaluable on the occasion Raspy became ill.

Raspy’s illness & subsequent sad, untimely passing, is well documented on this blog (click here) so I will not repeat the details on this post.  I will just say that on Monday 21st November, 2011, I kept an eye on the webcam as Raspy had been having problems with passing eggs.  During the day she was fine; she was in the Ferplast with her beloved Bezukhov, & was lively & happy.  When I arrived home & found her struggling, I could pin point that the problem had begun within the last hour.

It was a relief to know she had not been in pain all day.

Later on, I saved a video of part of what was streamed that day, on the host website.  At the time, I believe the videos were too large to download to my hard drive.  In time, the host website shutdown.  They had sent an email warning of the shutdown & how to retrieve videos, but (annoyingly) I did not read it until it was too late.  The website closed down & my video was lost.  I felt sad as it was the last video of a happy Raspy.

Then we come to one day after the 8th anniversary of Raspy’s passing (24th November 2019), when I was browsing the internet & amazingly, came across the video!  It was on another website.  The video was almost 2 hours long, but I managed to quickly download it to my hard drive & then upload to YouTube (how technology changes!)

I present it to you here.  Quality is bad & it is very long (!) but I wanted to dedicate a post to something I thought I had lost.  Even though Raspy died just two days after this video, I feel happy watching it & seeing the good spirits that both she & Bezukhov were in.

 

Still in our thoughts.

Love you always my dear Raspy and my dear Bezukhov.

♥♥♥

 

Perry’s Pleasurable Places

Following on from my post on Lennie’s pleasurable places,  I will attempt to balance things out by reporting on Perry’s pleasurable places. Perry has not been anywhere near as prolific as Lennie in the wiggle/jiggle department, but has indulged nevertheless.  His first foray into this habit was with the red mirror.

28th February 2017 – The red mirror.

 

However, Perry’s current preferred pleasurable place is the green peg (below).

26th June 2017 – The green peg.

 

I choose to believe this behaviour is completely normal. 🙂

Perry

 

 

Lennie’s Pleasurable Places

This post has been a long time coming & because of that, is quite long & video heavy.  Warning over!

From early on, Lennie began to wiggle & jiggle when & where he could.  He has come across as experimental but it is possible he has just not been fussed & made the most of whatever was available at the required time.  In the following videos you can get a flavour of his open-mindedness.

1st December 2016 – Raffia toy.

 

14th December 2016 – Perch, holding onto millet.

 

22nd December 2016 – White seed feeder.

Zero by Ten

Last month I reported that Phineas likes to have two hand jives by ten o’clock.  He had begun to moult & had reduced his two jives to one.  However, his moult has gradually got heavier & now there are zero jives by ten o’clock.  Despite this departure from normal routine, he does managed to fit in a jiggy at some point in the day, whether it is the afternoon or early evening.

Here is the man in all his jiggying glory:

 

 

 

Two by Ten

It’s ten o’clock already?

 

Since I last reported on the return of Phineas being randy, he has continued with his hand jiving.  We have settled into a routine where he has two jiggys by ten o’clock.

I find that if he does not have his required quota by a certain time then he can be unbearable to live with!

Just recently, he has been moulting so we are currently down to one jiggy by ten o’clock but I anticipate the return to two jiggys by ten o’clock quite soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two month hiatus

Phineas is randy again.

Phineas

Towards the end of October, Phineas lost the urge to do the jiggy-jiggy hand jive.  Along with this, he also stopped regurgitating.  This coincided with his moult.  Last year, the hiatus lasted around 5-6 weeks.  This time it lasted just over two months.  He broke it on the 28th December with a jiggy-jiggy that he progressed, with a flourish, to the final deposit stage.  Since then, he has begun regurgitating again & is demanding more of my attention.

Phineas is back to his version of ‘normal’.  It is early stages but this appears to mean that ruffling of cheek feathers is now not acceptable.  When he started letting me ruffle his feathers, I looked for an opportunity to do this each day & so we developed a routine.  Now, when I try to do this he does not respond – he just moves his head away.  It is entirely possible I may have to wait until his big moult next September/October before feather ruffling will happen again!

 

‘Deposit’

 

 

Guarding the Hand

As mentioned previously, since Cagney’s passing, Phineas has barely missed a beat regarding his daily regurgitating & hand-jive activities.

My right hand is the preferred location for jiggy-jiggy, as are the fingers & thumb.  Phineas is under the impression that because he is attached to my right hand/fingers & thumb, that everyone else is interested too.  This means he has to protect my hand from possible invaders.

Over time, he has become slightly less territorial over my fingers; he can regurgitate with someone sitting in the background without having to keep stopping to warn off that other presence.  My hand, with the associated activity of the hand jive is a different matter though.  When he is ‘in the mood’, he has to make sure no one comes within a certain radius of my hand.  The more ‘in the mood’ he gets, the more protective & territorial he gets.  Because of this tendency to aggression I usually engineer a hand jiggy-jiggy session in the cage.  This has two benefits.  The first is that he is more likely to finish ‘the job’ without having to keep stopping to warn off others.  The second is that whoever shows an interest is less likely to be thumped.

Sometimes, when Phineas is extra-hyper, & slamming against the side of the cage to warn off would-be competition, I cover the cage over so he can concentrate on the deed.

Phineas

 

Unfortunately, we now have an added complication in that Bezukhov has moved in with Phineas, albeit just being overnight stays.  I dare not allow relations with my hand whilst Bezukhov is in the same, confined vicinity.  This means that when Phineas wants to boogie-woogie, this either has to be done outside the cage, with Bezukhov locked in, or in the cage, with Bezukhov locked out!  Usually Phineas wants rumpy-pumpy first thing in the morning after a long, jiggy-free night.  Like I say… it is an added complication…

 

Getting by without Cagney

Things here have been a bit odd. We are still working out how to function without Cagney.

Bezukhov & Phineas on the window perch

Bezukhov & Phineas sleeping on the playgym

Phineas, it must be said, barely lost a beat with his regurgitating & jiggying.  The only slight change in Phinny’s behaviour was first thing in the morning.  When I uncover him he usually has his first morning regurgitation. For at least two weeks after Cagney’s passing, Phineas chatted to my finger, but  did not regurgitate. However, he wanted his morning jiggy-jiggy as usual, & once he had that, regurgitation resumed as normal (near constant throughout the day!)  Normal morning regurgitation returned on the 4^th October.

Bezukhov has a harder road to travel & at times it shows. During the day he attempts to engage with Phineas (not always successfully).  He has been sitting on my finger more.  Normally he would just use my finger to either get to someplace else or to get closer to food, but he has been sitting quietly preening.  He has also been spending more time on the window perch.

Despite Bezukhov’s best efforts, he & Phineas still operate separately.  For example, they eat together but one in the Manor & one in the Ferplast.

On the subject of food, another change is that Bezukhov can now eat the oats in the seed mix – Cagney always ate them first…

 

 

A tentative jiggy

No kissy-kissy today then?

Nope… I’m just not in the mood…

Ironically, not long after my posting in September about Phineas & his morning constitutional, he abruptly stopped all this activity.  No hand jive, no boogie-woogie-ing, no experimental positions & no regurgitating.  He all but ignored me completely & mostly, although not exclusively, took to his bed.

As the days turned into long weeks I wondered what had caused this apparent personality change…

• Could he be ill?  Naturally, I studied his poop more closely than usual but when there were a spate of not-so-wonderful poops, he would confuse me by following up with some perfectly normal poops.  Apart from the extra sleeping, he seemed fine.
• Perhaps it was down to his moult?  His moult, though significant, was not quite in the same league as Cagney’s moult.  Could a moult produce such a major change in his demeanor?
• Maybe Phinny’s behaviour was a side effect of Cagney’s heavy moult?  Did Phinny not find Cagney as attractive with all those pin feathers on his head?  (I would like to think that Phinny is not that shallow!)  Or maybe Phineas was less inspired to indulge in hanky-panky when his beloved was so obviously suffering?

Who knows?

All I do know is that three days ago, Phineas had a tentative jiggy-jiggy on my hand.  I felt relief.  If his 5-6 weeks in the barren, passionless wilderness were a result of one or all of the above, I was just pleased he had come through it & was beginning to exhibit some ‘normal’ Phineas behaviour.

Yesterday morning he seemed pleased at my offer of a finger through the bars for regurgitation & then he indicated he wanted more.  I put my hand in to see if he wanted his morning constitutional & he jumped right on!  He was clearly out of practice & was quite ‘gentle’ but somehow it still felt right.

Today he once again wanted an in-cage jiggy-jiggy but this time completed the ‘job’.

I’m back!

Welcome back, Phineas!

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A change is as good as a rest

Phineas is still very much into doing the hand jive.  He will jiggy-jiggy at least once a day & would most probably be happy fitting more sessions in if he could.  I had previously posted that he was right-handed/winged/clawed so the majority of his jiggling takes place on my right hand & the left hand is only used in emergencies.

So, Phineas is very much a creature of habit.  However, in the last few weeks he has been experimenting!  He still favours my right hand but he sometimes attempts to change position.

The normal position is that he rubs his bottom along my ring finger.  He clutches onto the bottom of my ring finger with his right foot & his left foot holds onto my index finger.  All very good… apart from when his right foot clenches so hard that blood supply is almost stopped to my ring finger….

The new position entails rubbing his bottom along the outside of my little finger.  It feels very strange to me so it must have a great novelty factor for Phinny!  In this position, his feet flounder a bit as they naturally gravitate to my palm, so their positions can vary.  Sometimes, he starts off in the normal position, then moves to the little finger position & if he cannot get purchase quick enough, will revert to the normal position to ‘finish the job’.

However, there have been a few occasions when he has managed to complete the job in the new position.  To prove this, I present a photo of evidence, showing his deposit left on my little finger.  In the normal position it is left on the side of my ring finger.

Experimental deposit position

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BTW, who knew, when I started this blog, that I would be writing about these kind of things!  Thanks a bunch, Phineas!

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