As a friend pointed out recently, it’s been some time since I wrote here. It’s not been an intentional hiatus; rather, my creative energies have been focused in other directions and my life, as a whole, has been more than a little unstable. I’m working to change that.

My employment situation, such as it is, has stabilized. While still serving, in title only, as Director of Engineering for the company, I have been told that I’m now an independent contractor. I’m being paid at an hourly rate equivalent to half my previous salary. I am receiving no benefits and am having to pay COBRA rates for health insurance out of pocket. My work week is twenty hours, which I have decided to provide as two 7-hour days and one 6-hour day. I don’t work one minute longer.

I now admit to myself that I was angry about this situation; insulted, I was in a right snit for some time. I’m over that now, and it’s no longer personal. Being an independent contractor has some advantages, but beyond even those, I have found myself with a refreshingly new mindset. Before, as a full-time employee and member of management, I tended to become very invested in virtually every aspect of my job. The company’s engineering successes were my own, but so were the many areas in which the company failed its customers. I felt personally responsible for and attached to these failures, even though most of them were completely unrelated to my performance. To an extent, I became the company.

That’s changed now. As a part-time independent contractor, I remind myself daily that the problems I see are not mine anymore. I just work here. Customers who depend on me to provide engineering support for their systems are up in arms over my reduction in hours, fearing that they’ll be left hanging in the event of an emergency. I sympathize, I emphasize that none of this was my idea, and apologize on the company’s behalf. I then give them the boss’ phone number, hang up, and divest myself of any negative feelings. I am not the company any longer.

The company itself is in deep trouble. In a few weeks or perhaps a few months, there’ll be nothing left of what was once a thriving concern. I’m watching it happen, doing what I can and what I’m able in the hours I work, and I’m distanced from it now. My feelings are different from before in the same way that watching a car accident on television is different from being involved in one. It’s a bit jarring and unpleasant to see, but then you just change the channel and laugh as Gregory House calls someone an idiot again.

Birds have continued to occupy a large sector of my time and emotional energy lately. From May through early June, Allison and I along with Chelsea (and occasionally Raymond) managed the Parrots of the Caribbean aviary at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. We volunteered there last year and enjoyed it thoroughly. This year, the founder and director of EarthQuest, Steve Hoddy, asked us to run the parrot exhibit for him.

It’s a beautiful facility. The aviary is roughly a square 75 feet on each side, completely covered with a material called shade cloth. The cloth keeps parrots and cockatoos in, keeps birds of prey out, and cuts the sun’s rays by a considerable factor, keeping the aviary cool. Inside, the birds are completely free to fly around or perch in their favorite spots. Guests, who enter through protected doors, walk among the birds, interact with them, and enjoy the spectacle.

It was a ton of work, much of it spent in either sweltering heat or drizzling rain. Because of my personal choice not to use a glove when handling and training large birds, my hands sported impressive carnage for weeks. Because I was working full-time during all this, I had not a single day off for the entire two months, other than a single work holiday. I grumbled, I groaned, and I complained far more than Allison would have liked, but I also have to admit that I enjoyed every minute, and that I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Of course, the work involved dressing like a pirate! Allison outdid herself in putting together pirate costumes for the whole family; I had a great pair of boots, homemade pirate pants, some blousy linen pirate shirts, a real leather bandolier, a headcloth and an authentic-looking pirate hat. I even kept my beard long for most of the time, despite sidelong glances from co-workers. Arrrr.

One of the joys of working with birds is that they all have distinct personalities which are as colorful as their plumage. Let me tell you about a few of the dear friends I met and worked with during the festival.

Rainbow is a beautiful scarlet macaw. He’d be much more beautiful if he hadn’t gone through some hard times. Rainbow was overbonded to his owner, an older woman who passed away a couple of years ago. In a profound grief reaction, he pulled out every feather he could reach, picking himself clean before he finally got over her and moved on. He’s starting to re-grow feathers now and is as colorful as his name might suggest, but it’ll be another year or two before he’s in full feather again.

Rainbow is on a bit of a power trip. His favorite game is making people jump. He will wait until a group of people, preferably small children, are standing very close to his perch. He chooses his moment carefully. When no member of the group is looking in his direction, he will suddenly unleash a piercing, strident squawk at an incredibly loud volume, then bob his head in satisfaction as the people all jump out of their skins. I cannot help laughing. People are his favorite toys.

Mom and Dad are two blue and gold macaws who represent the sort of marital success I wish humans achieved more often. They’ve been together for thirty years. As a mated pair, they’re less interested in human interaction than most single birds, but they’re not totally reclusive. Dad loves to display, spreading his wings wide and puffing up his feathers and being a total macho-bird, whenever anyone draws too near. The two are difficult to handle, and most people tend to bring them in and out of their cage on a stick rather than by hand. I’m far too stupid and stubborn for that, though. They’ve stepped up onto my hands many times, sometimes even without inflicting serious injury.

On one particular day, when it was time to go from aviary to cage for the night, they were being stubborn. Dad kept biting at me each time I reached for him,and Mom kept running away. The rule had always been to pick up Dad first so as to avoid any protective aggression. Since he wasn’t having any of that, though, and because I was frustrated, I simply picked Mom up from the ground where she’d fled and walked away. There was a loud, indignant squawk, and I looked back to see Dad looking very worried.

“Come on, Dad,” I called over my shoulder, and raised my opposite arm. In what to me was an indescribably special and beautiful moment, the huge bird raised his wings, jumped from the perch, and majestically soared across the aviary, flaring at the last moment to execute a perfect landing on my outstretched arm.

One of my duties during the festival was to introduce the Birds of Prey show, a most impressive falconry demonstration presented by Steve Hoddy himself. I would go out before the show with one of the parrots or cockatoos perched on my hand, and talk a little about our parrot exhibit, parrots in general, and parrot rescue. I would then admit that parrots are birds that pray they don’t get eaten by birds of prey, at which point I would introduce Steve. His first line would refer to his birds eating birds that talk, and my parrot and I would silently disappear as Steve began the show. I had a blast doing it, and toward the end I even brought my own bird, Mila, to visit the aviary and help me with the intros. Mila knows several cute tricks, which she performed to a very attentive audience, and she really seemed to love being out there.

EarthQuest is big on environmental education, so Steve performs shows for schools, environmental organizations, parks, and other various hosts throughout the year. He recently did a show for a Cub Scout troop in Jasper, Georgia, giving me the opportunity to photograph the demonstration. The above photo is one of a set which you can see on my Flickr photostream.

Allison has found herself far more comfortable with many of the large birds than the was before this experience. Also, Chelsea, Allison’s 21-year-old daughter, surprised us all. I don’t think she’ll mind my telling you that she’s been afraid of birds for years. She doesn’t mind looking at them or even cuddling with our tiny little green-cheeked conure, but a bird flying toward her used to send her running for cover.

A strange thing happened during the festival. While helping in the aviary, Chelsea met a lot of the birds and actually grew close to some of them, particularly a pair of umbrella cockatoos named Oupay and Qupay. Brother and sister, the two are nearly inseparable but are also the cuddliest that two birds can be without spontaneously morphing into teddy bears. Working with these birds brought about a huge change in Chelsea’s outlook. She began not only working around birds but actually enjoying it! Suddenly I had a most eager student quizzing me on every aspect of bird handling, enthusiastically reporting every successful experience to me, and actively seeking out opportunities to interact with the parrots and cockatoos. The birds seemed to like her, too. She could, in fact, readily handle one or two birds that tended to exhibit very poor manners toward me.

Before we were finished, she was not only participating in the early training of a previously unhandled and untrained amazon parrot, but allowing some of the fully flighted birds to fly directly to her arm. A former bird-phobic became a novice bird trainer/handler right before my eyes, and I am enormously pleased and proud.

The last day of the festival was bittersweet. I looked forward to having more free time, but saying goodbye to the birds was hard. I’d gotten used to their company, their antics, their chatter and even their noise. We’ll get to visit them at the EarthQuest preserve, but we won’t be hanging out two days a week anymore, and I miss them.

There’s a lot more going on in my life, but this post is nearing 2,000 words. Tune in for the next exciting episode, in which I sunburn myself to a crisp and visit my hometown.