Being a producer in a consumer culture

I found this interesting article online today. Ten More Quick Ways to Make Money. The article excites me not because it's a get rich quick scheme but because it speaks well to the complaints I have about our culture. Complaints I can never quite articulate well. We are all consumers, not producers. Our consumption not only ruins the planet but it is unfulfilling. I think this article does a good job of shining light on the unfulfilling part of it. Our culture wants to make us dependent and weak. If my hike showed me anything it's that I feel a craving to be strong and independent.

I love Web development, but sometimes it is too abstract. What real value does it provide to society? Not much, really. I enjoy it because it is creative and involves my mind. It pays well, too, at least sometimes. But it is not tangible.

Doing Web development day after day, month after month, 8 hours a day I end up feeling like my life is passing me by without meaning. It's one reason I left my job and hit the trail. When I returned to the trail it was months before I could bring myself to do Web development again. After living in a tangible world, doing something so abstract was difficult. I turned to organic gardening and working in retail. I wanted to dig and sweep and move rocks and dust shelves. It seemed more real.

At the bird store where I work, I recently sold a tree stand. It is a stand for birds made of a manzanita branch stuck on a rolling base so that it forms a little tree for the bird to sit on. The stand cost $250. The builder probably made $100 or so. My boss says the builder is a flake. I was thinking that maybe I could make a tree stand. I need to learn how to use tools to build the base or else find something to use for the base. I have tried to build a tree stand in the past. Using a pot full of plaster of paris works but it does not roll on wheels and the pot gets full of food and poo that the bird drops. A saucer for a plant works as long as it is strong and not too heavy. These can be hard to find and expensive. The tree stands the pet store sells looks like the base is made of kitchen counter top material. I would have to learn to use power tools to cut kitchen counter top material. I am afraid of power tools.

Another thing I've been thinking of making are bird toys. I could find things at Art From Scrap and use papier mache and other items to make fun bird toys. I can test them on my finicky birds. Too many bird toys are made of plastic or just big chunks of wood. Birds need to forage for their food. This activity is called enrichment. The bird store sells papier mache toys that you can hide food inside. I could make those, too. I could make other toys, too, that are more than just chunks of wood and plastic. Art From Scrap ought to have some good ideas for me.

The idea isn't to make a million bucks on bird accessories but to use wasted time spent in front of the TV or the Internet to make a little extra money. I could spend that otherwise wasted time making something tangible. Then I would feel like I'm not just living in my head being abstract all day, depending on corporate nannydom for my livelihood. It would be one more thing to add to my list that makes money, earns me a little more independence from Corporate America and brings me one step closer to the freedom I seek. The freedom to fly the trail again.

Lessons from the pet store

I work at a local pet store that sells only birds and bird-related supplies. They do not sell a lot of birds, and this is on purpose. Birds are very difficult to live with and people often want to buy birds for the wrong reasons or without doing enough research. Then they see how difficult birds are to live with and abuse, neglect or relinquish them. Rather than add more birds to the world, the pet store prefers to support the birds already out there and help relinquished birds find new homes.

The birds that the pet store raises and sells are all small birds, the kinds that are easier to live with. They have a bird sanctuary full of big unwanted birds for those people who think they can handle a cockatoo, African grey or Amazon. People who think they want a bird like that have to go through a lot of hoops to be approved to take one of these large, wild animals home. This ensures the birds won't come back again. Some of the birds will probably live at the sanctuary forever, especially the ones with unpredictable temperaments or the ones who have pulled out all their feathers. The sanctuary will sometimes provide the latter birds with a little sweater to wear.

I do not particularly like working in retail but the pet store offers a unique experience because I get to work with the animals. Yesterday I helped groom the birds. My job was to hold them while my boss did the actual grooming. Holding them involves putting a choke-hold around their necks so they cannot bite me or the groomer. They are not actually choked. I hold them around the neck under the mandible so that they can't tilt their heads down to bite. I also have to hold their bodies so that they won't wiggle too much and accidentally get a toe chopped off. Grooming involves cutting their toenails, trimming their wings (if that is desired) and sometimes using a dremmel tool on their beaks.

Yesterday we groomed an African gray that had had a bad experience with grooming and boarding at a different facility. No one knows what happened to the bird there, but the bird went into the facility happy and came out terrified. It has taken four years for the bird to learn to step up again.

The groomer had to struggle to get the bird out of the cage. The bird saw the towel coming and started screaming a horrible cry that showed the bird was terrified. He fought coming out of his travel cage with all his might, which only made the experience extra traumatic for him. He lost two feathers in the struggle.

He cried the whole time we held him down. Something about his cries were so heartbreaking that my eyes teared up. What had they done to him to make him so terrified? I wished we could communicate to him that he would be ok, that we would not hurt him. I tried to comfort him with my voice, but we are not the same species. How could he understand?

His nails were half an inch too long. Normally only a tiny bit is cut off the nail. We cut a large curly-cue of nail off. He will be able to grasp normally again. We hoped our efforts did not further traumatize him and set him back on his progress toward trusting people again.

After we groomed the African gray, the groomer gave a Moluccan cockatoo a bath in the kitchen sink. My job was to blow dry the bird. Fortunately the bird enjoyed blow drying. Cockatoos love attention so having someone fuss and touch the bird all over and blow warm air was something this bird enjoyed. As the bird became nearly dry, he seemed to enjoy being hugged and cuddled as I dried under his wings. I enjoyed hugging and cuddling the beautiful salmon and yellow bird, too.

Meanwhile, Dolly, the resident Moluccan cockatoo, who has been hazing me since I started working there, could only look on with hatred and jealousy. If only Dolly would quit hazing me she might get attention from me, too. Instead, she tries to bite me whenever I come by. She doesn't really bite. She just tries to show me she's boss by faking taking a swipe at me. So I wave a stick at her to show her she is not the boss. She runs into her cage and we give each other the evil eye. Funny thing is she never treated me like this when I was a customer. She would let me pet her like she lets all the other customers do.

These are the things you have to deal with when you deal with birds. That is why they are so hard to live with. You never know what kind of bird you will end up with. Will it be fearful and distrusting? Will it bite huge painful holes in you (that has also happened to me too many times to count)? Will it demand constant lovey-dovey attention as it tries to suck you into a vortex you can never fill? Even if the bird has a perfect personality it will likely destroy your carpet, doors, precious personal items and more.

At lunch I continued reading the book I checked out of the library called Writing Down the Bones. There is a story in there of a man who worked as a remote backcountry ranger. He was so remote and alone he spent two months not wearing any clothes. One day he was out picking berries and felt a tongue on his back. He turned around and a deer was licking him! He and the deer went back to picking and eating berries side-by-side. He felt he had reached a state of Oneness with nature at that moment sharing a berry bush with a deer.

I am not naked at the pet store, but I get little chances to make a connection to the animals. It is a similar feeling like making the connection to the Earth when I was on the Pacific Crest Trail. My experience out there showed me at a deep level that I am a creature of the Earth like the birds and other animals. We are all one. If we humans would stop seeing ourselves as separate from nature I am certain that nature would provide for us like it provides for the wild birds and the deer. Instead we separate ourselves and become like pet cockatoos: insatiable vortexes demanding more.

We are not meant to be separate, us and nature. That is one reason we try to artificially add animals to our lives. We are seeking that connection to Oneness we've lost. It works on some level, but the animal ends up having to make similar sacrifices to the ones we have made. As we have separated from the great Oneness, we have both become a little diminished, a little crazy with repetitive behaviors, violence and materialism. Our wants grow disproportionate. We both forget how to let nature provide for our needs and in forgetting become destructive. We both become little black holes of need that try to fill up our wants with artificial love instead of the Oneness that is available if only we stay wild. We humans have become captive wild animals.

Parrots like cheese

Why do birds like cheese? Right now all the birds are happily eating pieces of cheddar cheese. One of them is eating a piece almost as big as her head. When in nature would birds ever get cheese? Why do they all like it so much?

They are just like children. Or dogs. They love food that is bad for them. They snub the food that is good for them. If you don't know what parrots should eat, it is not solely bird seed. In the wild they eat natural things that grow on trees. They'll eat whatever is in season at that time. Some tree is in bloom so they'll eat all the flowers. Some tree is in fruit and they'll eat all the fruit. If they are ground feeders, they'll eat grasses, insects or grubs, or even seeds. Very few birds have seeds as their sole diet.

One thing I like to do is watch the crows throughout the year. When I see them feeding on some tree I look to see what it is they are after. Then I collect it as a special treat for my parrots. I've found pecan trees growing in town this way. Macadamias, too, although the crows don't eat them because you can't get them open without a hammer. One thing they like are the little red seeds inside the magnolia blossoms as they go to seed and fall off the tree. I have to wait for the crows to get tired of them before I can find the "cones" full of seeds. Ariel, our cockatoo, loves them.

It's important to watch what the wild birds do. There are some trees nearby that have these giant seed pods that fall into the street. I've never seen a crow eating these. So I don't even attempt to give them to the birds. We have avocado trees. Mammals eat the avocados but birds never do. It's important not to just give birds whatever looks like food. Make sure real birds eat it first.

I feed my parrots an artful bowl of food each morning. There is a mix that contains cooked noodles and whole grains with peas and carrots (Parrot Pilaf from Menagerie), some fruit, maybe some raw corn, possibly a cut up carrot with the greens, a special cookie (Coconutty Cookies from Menagerie), a nut (either a walnut, an almond or a pecan), a half-teaspoon of safflower seeds, a Nutriberry if we have them, a small quantity of extruded pellet food made for birds (I found some that doesn't have corn as the main ingredient) and whatever else might look good. The food is always good enough for me to eat, with the exception of the Nutriberries and extruded pellets.

Then there is the begging. Squeaky must have pieces of bagel and almond butter or flakes of cereal if that's what we're having for breakfast. Tony picks roses from the garden and when they fade, Squeaky eats them (we don't spray or use chemicals in the garden). Fergie like to beg for dinner. She'll eat nearly anything she can hold in her foot. Ariel doesn't like "people food". I guess she doesn't realize people eat passion fruits, apples and corn, too. These silly birds will drink wine if you let them. I'll let them have a sip but not too much.

My birds are 20 years old, 15, and 12, so I think I'm doing something right. Life with birds is always interesting. After all these years, I scarcely remember life without them.