State of the Collaboration: Good News! Bad News.

~ Jenny

Good news! Bob has given up harassing me about zombie Viking pirates.

And more good news: He put his dog Maggie into the new Rocky Start story, which I am 100% all for. So I put Mona and Emily in. And then . . .

And then, much later . . .

So good news: The zombies have evidently left the building.
Bad news: Now I have months of parrots and dolphins to deal with.

57 thoughts on “State of the Collaboration: Good News! Bad News.”

  1. A Dolphin? Is Dan Marino still around? How about Alex Karras? Garo Yepremian? Never mind – they’re all old geezers. I don’t know any current ones.

    I don’t know anything about parrots, either, except they are familiars for evil viziers and sound like Gilbert Gottfried.

    Given free range, Bob may bring in antagonists from The Organization or The Guild (of Assassins) or The Celler or their eminies. (See Phoebe and the Traitor).

  2. I know more than I want to about parrots. (We have one at work. More than 50 years old. Cusses under its breath because it grew up in a bar.) Don’t go there.

  3. I had two three-legged cats, mother and daughter, two separate car accidents. Ginger even managed to climb trees (her daughter had an acquired brain injury from the accident, and didn’t live long). They both had missing back legs. To make a three-legged cat ecstatic, scratch behind the ear that they can’t reach.

    Parrots: I live in Parrot Central. I am often visited by King Parrots, Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, Crimson Rosellas, and occasionally Rainbow Lorikeets and various black cockatoos.

    Sulfur Crested Cockatoos are loud, hilarious, highly intelligent and easily bored. When bored, they will tear shreds off timber railings and windows. They will eat your house. But I love the way they dance!

    King Parrots are slightly smaller, and very gentle. They will eat from your hand.

    Crimson Rosellas are more afraid of people, and wait until the others have fed.

    Rainbow Lorikeets hang around in gangs, and beat up the sulphur cresteds, despite being tiny. They have a barrel chest, and are the bird version of a London gangster. I haven’t seen them for a while, as they mostly come here when there’s a drought – I live in a forest east of Melbourne with a high rainfall, so there’s usually plenty of feed.

    The various types of black cockatoos don’t interact – they come through when certain foods are available, strip the tree in an hour or two, and move on.

    Most of the local parrots hang out in the surrounding trees, watching until I put out some seeds or fruit, then dive in when I go inside. It’s clear that they have mates and friends – there’s almost never just one.

    1. If introduced to the Appalachians, which ones might thrive as an invasive species? Turnabout for bringing rabbits to Australia.

        1. It’s the same on the other side of the North Sea. The last few years green parakeets have appeared in the neighbourhood. They dart up and down the canal in front of my house, which is fun to see. But they do screech.

      2. Sulphur cresteds are incredibly intelligent. Not sure how they would go in snow – does it snow there? – but they’re very adaptable. And loud!

        I think the less confident birds might struggle.

        1. You could have the NZ mountain parrot, Kea. They’re great … if they ever stop eating your car. (They’re also seriously endangered so you can’t really have them, sob.)

    3. Wow! You are a treasure trove of information about parrots. But would they survive in the appalachians?

    4. Years ago when we visited my MIL in Florida she always had a tourist attraction for us to visit. One time it was parrot showcase and I remembered the announcement “ladies be careful of your jewelry the parrots can and will snatch it off your neck”.

    5. We get all those in Canberra too, except the black cockatoos, as well as eastern rosellas, red-rumped parrots, green parrots, and galahs. The galahs are very sweet and docile, and will wait politely for everyone else to go through the food before they approach.

      1. Now I really want parrots.
        We have crows and owls and they fill up the night, along with song birds during the day.
        But parrots . . .
        Yeah, parrots would freeze here.

        2. I found some photos of sulphur cresteds in the snow – did you know that Australia in winter has more snow than Switzerland?

          Well, before climate change, anyway.

      2. I remember my front lawn in Deakin covered by a flock of crimson rosellas! This was during the Millennial Drought, when a lot of birds moved in from dryer areas to the west.

        I’m surprised you don’t get any of the types of black cockatoos – they cruise through denuding trees, but don’t stick around, so maybe you just haven’t seen them. I saw them maybe three or four times over the 14 years I lived in Tecoma, and each time it was pure luck.

        1. We might get them and I just don’t see them. I live in an inner suburbs apartment, so I mostly see the backyard birds. There was a sulphur crested on my neighbour’s lawn yesterday grubbing up acorns with its beak. It gave me that crazy cockeyed stare while I passed, like it was gauging whether or not I was going to dob it in, but went right back to digging as soon as I was gone.

  4. Dangit… I was holding onto hope for the Zombie Pirates. Looks like I’m gonna have to pivot to parrots and dolphins.

    HEY!! Can they be zombie parrots and dolphins?

  5. This is only tangentially related but I’m going to check out a rescue dog this morning. She’s part Basenji, so low shedding and not much barking. There’s some kind of problem with her tongue, so her food has to be prepared to be soupy. She’s beaming this huge smile in every picture.

    She was adopted from a shelter in Kentucky by a fireman and his wife who were shortly expecting their second child. After the baby arrived, it turned out dealing with a toddler, an infant and a special needs dog while dad went off to work for days at a time was too much for mom. (Understandably.)

    I’m trying to be sensible but I’m so excited. I’ve missed having a dog. Update tomorrow!

    2. Good luck. I hope it works out for the best for both of you. Basenjis are great dogs. My son and DIL had a mix who was wonderful, and smart.

    4. No dog.

      Sigh. When we got there, Nova proved to be a pittie mix who was shedding clouds of short, white hair. It totally sucked because she had a terrific personality, but by the time we got back to the truck we were both wheezing and coughing. The low-shed thing is a requirement.

      2. That’s crappy. Poodles aren’t a good fit for you?

        Also, no Basenji = no yodeling.

  6. “The National Park Service wants humans to stop licking this toad.” That is a headline for a story on NPR this morning. Don’t tell Bob. It’s a desert toad, so that might eliminate it from the running.

  7. The no shedding thing sounds great. Cooper is a mutt leaning heavily towards miniature Greyhound. I swear I sweep 10 dogs worth of hair up every day.
    I’m excited for you!

    And Jenny so happy about the no more zombies. The only time I want to hear about zombies is when Delores Riordan is singing about them.

    1. Maybe the parrot could sing the Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’ at inopportune times?

      And also have a pirate complex 😀

  8. Many decades ago I lived in SE Florida and for 3 summers, I worked in a day camp. Friday was field trip day. We visited Parrot Jungle, among many other places. It’s been renamed and is being renovated, but you could travel to Florida in the winter and call it research. https://www.jungleisland.com/

  9. Bob just tried to add a radioactive rabbit to the plot.
    No, I’m not kidding. Collaborating is not for the faint of heart.

    1. Does it bite someone, and they become Rabbitman?

      Rabbitman, Rabbitman does whatever a rabbit can
      Gnaws a carrot any size catches thieves just like flies
      Look out, here comes the rabbitman
      Is he strong? listen bud he’s got radioactive blood
      Can he chew through a door? take a look at the floor
      Hey, there! there goes the rabbitman.

      You do NOT want to get rabbit-punched.

      Or maybe the rabbit turns green and grows to man size and hulks out.

    2. This sounds amazing. The radioactive rabbit can be the bad guy. You can have bats as minions for the rabbit.
      You can add a St. Bernard as a Dumbledore like character. With sheep.
      Sheep can graze on the trail?
      A ghost unicorn was spotted on the trail?

    3. Tell him it has been done before. There is a very funny picture book called Bunnicula that the Lifeline Theatre in Chicago turned into a musical for their Kids Series. “Bunnicula- a very scary rabbit!!”

  11. This thread has given me so many belly laughs today. You are all nuts, but funny nuts.

  12. Emily is so cute. She picked the right person to move in with.

    Do the zombies kill the radioactive rabbits or is it the other way round? Is the Parrot the narrator of this thriller?

    1. Emily is a tank. A sweet tank, but everybody who meets her says, “Whoa.” She was really skinning when I adopted her but once she started on that expensive cat food, she blew up into a beast. Well, Maine Coon. They don’t come small.

      1. My Maine Coon (probably mix) Koshka is only 10 lbs. But he had a rough start to life, since he and his sister were rescued from a 25-cat hoarding situation, and he had all sorts of issues. He’s still fighting allergies. But all that floof makes you think he is much larger.

      2. Someday I want another Maine Coon. We had one named Clyde but someone came in the back door and took him.
        He started out as a mismatched set. Non MC cat Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie turned out to be Bernie.

  13. Why does the parrot have to be able to survive on its own? Parrots have traveled with people a lot.

    One of the great dramatic tensions when a story introduces old ladies, little kids, cats, and dogs is our assumption that they can’t live on their own without us.

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