Why I'll Never Buy Another Parakeet from a Pet Store

Full disclosure: as a child, I was given parakeets as a pet.  They lived lives of medium length, alone in cages that were probably too small for them, with little in the way of dietary or intellectual enrichment, aside from the ubiquitous bird mirror.  It was wrong to keep them that way - I know that now, but at the time, I had no idea how bad my care was.  This was all in the days before the Internet and putting yourself in your pet's footprints, and I can't change it, but I'm profoundly sorry for it now that I do know better.

I was browsing at my local "big chain" petstore the other day, as I'm wont to do; I don't demonize these establishments, though I'm increasingly uneasy with the idea of buying animals from them.  Still, I do enjoy going and looking in on the animals there, checking to be sure they're being cared for properly, and chatting with the other shoppers and staffers.  On this occasion, I wandered over to the parakeets, and stood for some time, watching their antics and enjoying their chattering.  And that's when I had a small epiphany.

Parakeets are designed by nature to be flock birds, as most birds are.  But with parakeets, those flocks can be hundreds or thousands strong.  I'd love to see one in person someday; it must be a real sight for the soul.  My point is, which I realized with a bit of a start, parakeets are not meant to be solitary birds with only humans as companions.  Nature simply didn't make them that way. 

In most pet stores, parakeets are now kept in large-ish enclosures that give them ample room to flutter their feather-clipped wings and socialize with other members of a flock in relative harmony.  This is the only life they have ever known since leaving their nest - life as part of a flock.  If you stand and watch parakeets in a pet store, they are constantly interacting with one another - grooming, playing, courting.  This is their entire life, and their definition of happiness.

Enter the human.  Most people who buy parakeets buy one, and only one.  In fact, some people believe that in order to bond with your parakeet, you MUST have only one, or they will bond with each other and not with you.  I don't know the truth or falsehood behind that statement, but what I do know is that it must be a jarring and traumatizing experience for the bird - to be suddenly removed from their flock, the only family they have ever known, popped into a cardboard box, and emerge into solitary confinement in a much smaller habitat than they have ever known in their short lives.

Birds are not meant to be solitary creatures... note the aforementioned flock environment... but neither were they designed by nature to befriend humans.  Parakeets are not domesticated animals.  They are TAME animals, exotic pets that are, at their core, still identical to their wild counterparts.  Trapped in a small cage all by themselves, deprived of their flock, they will eventually seek out interaction and companionship with the next best thing - their human caretakers - but the damage to their small minds and hearts must be devastating.  There's a reason why torturers use solitary confinement as the ultimate punishment for human prisoners, and a reason why Stockholm Syndrome (a condition where a captive will begin to empathize with, even care for, his or her captor) exists - social creatures cannot tolerate being on their own.  Birds forcibly removed from a flock will ultimately turn to humans for companionship, yes... but it's because they have to, not because they want to.

Watching the parakeets play and socialize together in the pet store that day, I decided then and there that I'd never buy a bird from a pet store again.

If I ever do decide to get a bird, I'll find myself a rescue or a breeder who has socialized their birds to humans in a caring and nurturing way, so that a friendship between bird and human can happen in a proper way - not as a result of emotional starvation.  And if I get a bird, I won't get just one.  I'll get two... not a substitute for a flock, maybe, but better than nothing.  If I befriend a bird, I want my friendship to take place on level ground... not because I'm manipulating an animal's hardwired need for companionship to suit my own desires.

Anxiety Trigger: Lesson Planning

I don't know why planning my lessons is an anxiety trigger.  I don't even know if I'm alone in this, or if it's common among other teachers.  All I know is this: sitting down alone to plan my lessons is one of my least favorite times of the week.

It's not as if I can articulate why trying to plan out my lessons makes me anxious.  All I know is this: the more I try to plan, the more I feel as though I don't know what I'm doing, what I should be doing, what I need to be doing.  I become swamped with feelings of inadequacy.  Sure, I can look back at previous years' plans, and that gives me the outline of what I need to be doing now... but it doesn't take the anxiety away. 

In fact, it causes a chain reaction of anxiety.  I find myself thinking about future lessons I don't particularly want to teach.  The more I teach science, for example, the less I like doing it - especially the hands-on activities the kids prefer to the dry, boring, and often confusing book work.  Given my own feelings about the science text, you'd think I'd welcome the hands-on "experiments" - but I don't.  I find hands-on messy and chaotic, necessitating more time for planning and set-up than is balanced out in benefit of knowledge gained.  I hate it. 

But here's the thing.  Right now, I'm not TEACHING science.  I'm in my Social Studies segment of the Thematic Studies lessons.  I honestly enjoy teaching Social Studies, inasmuch as I enjoy teaching anything... meaning, it's not quite as painful as many other subjects to me. 

And this triggers more thoughts... if this is how I feel about planning and teaching, why am I doing it?  BIG anxiety trigger, that is.  I know I'd rather be doing something other than teaching, careerwise - I just don't know WHAT.  And I also know that most other work out there A) would not pay as much as teaching, and B) would likely require me to do other things I don't like, such as spend all day in a cubicle pushing papers around, jumping to the tune of some petty manager.  I never watched The Office, but I've seen enough clips to get the feeling that it wasn't so far off base from reality. 

Maybe it's not so much that I don't want to be teaching, but I want to be teaching only what I want to teach, the way I want to teach it, which isn't remotely possible or even within the bounds of reality.

This is what planning time looks like inside my head.  It's a mess, and so am I by the time I get the planning done.  If I was a drinking woman, I'd need a stiff one.  The joy of it is, I can look forward to the same thing all over again in approximately a week.  It never ends, nine months out of the year.  Even during the summer I find myself dreading the start of the next school year... the start of the planning time.  Sigh.

But at least it's done for THIS week.

Finding ____ to Write

It's not about finding time to write... at least, not for me.  Because my writing-supporting job is teaching, I have two months of free-and-clear writing time each summer where, if I chose to do so, I could write for full 8 hour days if I chose.

But I don't.

Why?  I don't really know.  Maybe it's the perfectionist in me.  Some people advise to write every day, even if what you're writing is horrible.  I can't stomach that.  Forcing myself to write because "it's time to write" is about as palatable as forcing myself to eat because "it's time to eat."  If I'm not hungry, I don't want to eat.  If the words aren't there, I don't want to write.

So how does one fill in that blank?  Finding that... something... to write?  Finding the spirit to write?  The story to write?  The words to write?  All of those seem reasonable to me.  Without them, writing is bland and colorless.  I wish I knew how other writers, prolific writers, do it - get their ideas, keep the words flowing.  I can't even keep my blog updated, for crying out loud!

So... does this make me less of a writer, knowing this?  I surely hope not.