The ride home was amazing! I got a crick in my neck because I kept turning around to peer at them and make sure they were okay!
The pair we were given had already bred together twice so they were pretty close together and fairly calm the whole way, only giving the occasional squawk if we hit an unexpected bump in the road etc.
The weather had been fairly miserable but we got home okay with our temporary cage and because they were aviary birds we obviously had to sort something else out or the birds would start feeling a bit cramped before long! However, mother nature had other plans for us. Although we had ordered a suitable aviary on short notice, we were unable to pick it up because it ended up flooding again in our area.
I say again because the last bad one was in 2011, notably broadcast all over the world with a dodgy map of Australia and making it sound like the whole place was underwater, smacking our tourism industry around the face a few times. It was terrible - I'm not joking about that - but it mostly hit certain areas and my family wasn't in the area that was affected although several of our friends were.
This time it affected us more with my sister having to evacuate, family friends unable to reach their home, my parents in a dangerous area during a vacation, our house was okay but work was cancelled for us and the weather was terrible enough that we didn't want to leave the house anyway. We were very lucky, some work friends had water issues, friends down the road had no power but ours only flickered once or twice. Parts of our area flooded but luckily we were up pretty high on our street. Plus having just bought our house, we'd done thorough checks including flood areas even though we were fairly sure we were good.
So, very lucky for us but others in the area already badly hit in 2011 again suffered a terrible blow. When the weather cleared up a bit we ventured out to see if it was possible to get the aviary. The birds had been pretty good considering. As they weren't hand raised they weren't too comfortable around people so changing their food and water became a challenge because there was really nowhere 'safe' for them to retreat to in such a small space. That and I guess we weren't the people they were used to.
We had them outside initially but then when it started to get super windy, incredibly wet and lightning-y, we moved them inside next to a sheltered back door so they would still get some fresh air without getting the rest of the elements. So I think that helped them acclimatise to us a bit more. We tried to leave them alone to adjust as much as possible, hanging back to that they could observe us and realise that having forked out so much money for them and risking being pecked everyday - meant we really didn't want to harm them!
The store we got the aviary from was shut due to power outages, so we found a slightly bigger cage in the meantime as we had to return the temp cage. The amount of lolly gaggers and rubber necking on the roads was beyond belief. It was bad enough seeing everyone taking photos to put on Facebook.. but when the home owner of the flooded house is standing right there? Heartless. Yes, I understand that it's amazing but it was also dangerous and there was so many parents letting their kids play in the flood waters..
Yes, let me say that again...
Probably the same parents who cursed at teenagers/other people storm drain surfing were letting their young kids play in flood waters.
Ye gad!!! Why?!?!
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