The Gift of Love... Literally.

I celebrated the holidays Saturday and Sunday with family. Figuratively, the greatest gift of the season was that of love, since I do not get to see my family often enough.

But literally, my favorite gift of the 2005 holiday season was what my boyfriend and I gave my parents: Lovebirds.

I had hinted that my gift would fill the house with love, and that became literal too when one of them took a flight around the tree en route to the permanent cage before being recaptured.

Now “before my time” in the Bollenbacher family, Dad had ponies and there were a few indoor cocker spaniels which he breed. All I remember is that one of those stupid puppies bit a hole in the inflatable pool my grandparents had bought me and that my mom had developed a strict no-animals-in-the-house policy. Then, when I was in fifth grade, we got a pair of peach-face Lovebirds named Fred & Wilma.

Their name is derived from that fact that they pair up and display more canoodling than movie stars on tabloid covers. They’re supposedly not able to live without a mate. However, when Wilma became egg-bound Fred lasted several more years.

Upon shopping local breeders (from which the birds are much cheaper and healthier than stores) we discovered that Lovebirds are not racist. The nine different species do not discriminate when selecting a mate. Perhaps humans should take a note from the Lovebird. So, to reflect my diverse family, we selected another green peach-faced paired with a slate blue masked Lovebird. They’re so beautiful and fun to observe! You’ll notice in the photo above that the female is rather skittish and thus hiding from the camera on the side of the cage.

Since the male looks like Fred, we accidentally kept calling him that. When Mom commented on the female’s white markings looking like a fur around her neck, I suggested calling them Fred and Ginger (Astaire and Rogers), though the verdict is still out on that and other options including Bill and Hilary or Lucy and Ricky.

For more on Lovebirds click here.
Or, for a different holiday topic, go to my friend Jeff's Blog for wonderful commentary on “Happy Holidays.”