Blake

Atop a cupboard door, directly under the plaster ceiling.

On his playpen, here atop a crate by the glass door so he can watch the world go by and yell at it occasionally.

Here he is where we found him (he was lost for a few minutes) in the back of the closet, having scaled a pile of boots to get closer to his objets d'amour, two pairs of patterned (very important) shorts. You can't really tell but he's opened his beak a tad, hostilely, demonstrating his desire to protect the shorts from other suitors and threatening us if we remove him from them. With knee-high black leather boots and a blue silk nightie to fixate on, he wanted the shorts.

Despite appearances, the velcro is securely fastened. The yellow lanyard leash connects by a clasp and ring to a thick bit of black velcro. The black velcro goes between the two sides of the gray harness, which attach by velcro. So there's quite a bit of velcro going on there, and what looks, to my nervous eye, like a loose fit is actually a triple ply of velcro. There are little white straps that go over his shoulders and then the grey fabric down his belly and under his wings over his back. The humiliating aspect of it (or the most humiliating aspect, from his point of view maybe) is the little bit of extra under his cloaca, as if he were a city horse wearing a diaper (which I notice that cab horses but not police horses wear--why is that?).

Remember "The Road to Wellville" and the song they'd sing at supper, "Chew chew chew..."? That is Blake's motto.

This is why people hate pet pages. This is why the pets hate their pet pages.

First stretch the left side, wing and leg...	Then the right side...	Blake sees a man about a horse. Or a boy about a dog. Probably both. Notice the fluffed belly, the squat, and the keel seam.

Preening is an important part of a bird's daily routine. On the back of the chair zipping his tail from base to tip, a buddy in a blur of motion.

My mother gave us a candelabra for Christmas (2000). Blake can't walk by it without bowing to it. He worships things.