In which Dreamy develops a taste for bird excrement

Dreamy and I have been spending a lot of time together. When we're at my house, that means that Dreamy also spends a lot of time with my pet lovebird, Persil, since wherever I am is usually where Persil likes to be (and the same could be said of Dreamy). Luckily for me, they've taken a shine to each other. Dreamy doesn't mind the occasional bite, and has taken to calling Persil a variety of nicknames, including P-dawg, P-money, and Perster. When he arrives at my place, his first stop after kissing me hello is Persil's cage, where he stops to pat him and inquire how he's doing.

However, there is one aspect of Persil's personality that Dreamy is not a fan of, and it is Persil's fondness for pooping. "Boy, you sure do love to poop!" he exclaims each time a new little green slime appears, in a voice that strains to be cheerful. Or: "Whoa, I just put my arm around you and got Persil poop all over my fingers!" (After my computer, Persil's favorite spot to poop is on my shoulder.) Lovebirds poop on average once every 15 minutes; I haven't timed him on a regular enough basis to say for sure, but my unscientific estimate is that Persil poops 3 times more than the average lovebird. Dreamy tries to be nice about it, but he's clearly a bit amazed at how blase I am about all the poop.

I know, it does sound gross, and sometimes it is. But bear in mind that lovebird poops are less gross than almost any other animal. They aren't brown, they're a pretty combination of green and white. They don't smell at all. They're tiny. They're easily cleaned up. And, the pee is included so you only have to deal with one bodily emission!

A couple of weeks ago, I gave Dreamy a French press since he was in need of a new coffee maker. Because he's a bit clueless in the kitchen, he decided to give it a test run at my house while I was there to give him instructions. I was showering and getting dressed as this was happening, and every 30 seconds or so he'd call out a question: "How much coffee should I put in?" "Is this enough?" "Should I pack it down?" "How long should I let it sit for?"

Finally, the coffee was done, after he had let it sit for 20 minutes just to be on the safe side. I was about to come out to try a test sip when I heard a strange noise, like a groan. I had never heard a noise like that from Dreamy, so I immediately stuck my head out of the bedroom door. "What's wrong?"

"Persil pooped in the coffee," Dreamy replied, failing for once to maintain his cheerfulness. He pointed: there, perfectly situated in the center of the pour lip, was a glistening, coiled poop.

"It didn't go IN the coffee," I said, trying to salvage the situation. "Let's take the lid off, clean it really well, and put it back on."

"But it might have dripped down," Dreamy replied. It didn't look to me like it had, but realizing I was in danger of getting a reputation for being gross, I acquiesced, dumped the coffee out, and put Persil in his cafe for a time out while Dreamy made more.

The next morning, a bit to my amazement, when Dreamy woke up he proposed cooking breakfast for me. "Do you have eggs?" he asked, "I'll scramble them." To which I replied, dubiously, "Do you know how to scramble eggs?" Well, it turns out he does.

I warned him about not heating the nonstick pan too much, since it can emit fumes that are fatal to birds, but apparently I forgot to instruct him to put Persil away in his cage. Dreamy was happily scrambling the eggs up with a wooden spoon, Persil perched on his elbow, when it occurred to my little feathered baby that it would be interesting to go for a swim in the warm yellow liquid below. He took off and landed squarely in the eggs, face first. Dreamy yelled, reached into the hot eggs, and pulled him out before a second had passed. He handed him to me as though we had been rehearsing the move, while I stayed calm, turned the tap on, and put Persil's oily, egg-covered body under lukewarm water. When most of the egg was gone, I returned him, much subdued, to his cage, where he recovered on his heated perch.

Dreamy and I then turned our attention to our suspended breakfast. He pulled out a feather and what could have been a little piece of herb, or a poop. I told him to trash the eggs and offered to go buy more. Dreamy looked disheartened and uncertain. The, he squared his shoulders. "No," he said, "let's just eat it."

So that's what we did. We ate every bite of it, bird poop and all. And it was delicious.