Animals Gone Wild

      I don't know what I would do if I ever took in an animal that was normal.  Seriously.  From a half naked macaw that used to call people "asshole" (she was half naked as the result of abuse[birds pluck their breast feathers when under stress and after awhile, the damage is permanent and the feathers don't grow back, so she looked like a Purdue chicken with wings and a feathered head]), a mouse that wouldn't come out to play unless you bribed her with 1/2 a munchkin from work, to a dog that would eat anything and everything from an expensive rug, wallets (except cash, ID, and credit cards), to entire medication bottles and tubes with exception of the words "do not eat," I should not be surprised in the least that even though our house is pretty low on the critter count compared to the last few years, we have anything but normal critters. 
     Let's start out with my serial killing hamster Darwin.  If it was just one sister, she would just be a murdering bitch, or possibly a rough housing, overly playful little dwarf.  But 2 dead sisters?  No, that's serial killing material.  Especially when you take into consideration the God awful screams that came from that tiny little cage during the fights over their over-sized food bowl.  I considered naming her after any number of the infamous serial killers, but that would just be too creepy.  Darwin sounds less creepy and considering the fights were always about food and treats, (and she did survive 3 days in this house out of her cage without being caught by the dog), it does sort of fit.  Even for a serial killing dwarf.
     Most of you have heard plenty of stories of my back talking circus dog.  As she tore apart my bedroom garbage this morning--emptying the contents into a hamper full of CLEAN laundry to get at a bit of treat I threw out last week... yet she's pissed at ME for washing her bedding.  Yes, she actually threw a temper tantrum when I finally let her back down here and discovered that her bedding was clean.  Go figure. 
     And last year, I took in a pair of parakeets from my mentor/friend.  They've been temporarily moved down here because they started fighting and screaming almost non stop from the time the sun came up until the sun went down, all day every day.  The male bird did learn that if he went to the bottom of the cage and flapped his wings, he could get my dog to pounce on the cage thus scaring the hell out of the female. So until we finish clearing out the sun room, they're down here.  And for the most part, they're pretty quiet.  He even warns me when the mutt is trying to sneak down the stairs by dinging the bell in his cage once.  But now both of them are pissed off at me.  I had to clean their cage out today, which isn't anything new and takes all of 5 minutes.  It was when I opened the door to fill their food dish things went very awry.  I had the door open for all of 3 seconds when he decided to make the great escape--into my basement.  I'd been dealing with a migraine from hell all day, my joints started to ache more as the day went on, and there's this damn parakeet perched on a window sill on top of a pile of boxes making kissy noises and laughing at me because he knows my achy, fat ass doesn't stand a chance of getting to him.  Until my mom tossed a towel down to me.  One shot and he was caught.  And had to listen to his partner yell at him for the next few hours because there was no treat stick in their cage.  Oops... And my mom casually mentions that my neighbor's finches (or canaries, I can't remember which) are starting to nest and if they have baby birds, we have first pick... (keep in mind one bird's name is Lucifer, and the other's name is Satan... because their little baby birds might almost be normal if one came into this house, right?)