I thought about the "Lost" topic a bit and pretty much settled on drawing a room with my glasses hidden in it somewhere, but didn't get time.

So here's an old "Lost" picture. Anyone who has read the archives here will have already seen this picture and know the sorry saga of Percy, our wonderful talking cockatiel who flew off early last year. This picture (in black and white, he's really the usual colours) was for a "Lost" flyer we put in letterboxes. After tracing some 30-40 found cockatiels, we eventually located exactly where he had gone (on the same day he was lost) due to several neighbours of the finders. Unfortunately, that didn't help us get him back... maybe someday I'll do a comic about it!

I still can't convince myself that clipping birds is a good idea - it definitely makes them unfit and unhealthy, but maybe as an occasional thing it's okay. And I'm also never going to be keen on keeping pets in cages (apart from to sleep), so that's not a solution either.

Percy was quite a character. Parrots are at the top end of intelligent bird families, with cockatoos among the brightest, so it shouldn't be a surprise that cockatiels can be brainy, though I've come to realize that, even for a cockatiel, Percy was exceptionally smart. I was amazed at the amount of tunes and phrases he could recall, how much he could be trained and his general sociability with all people and animals. He did haul off and attack me occasionally (which is due to hormones once males reach a certain age) so caution can be needed with cockatiels at times, particularly with children, though good training will always help.

Labels: Illustration Friday