{"id":597,"date":"2006-09-20T06:14:18","date_gmt":"2006-09-20T06:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/65.175.102.14\/?p=597"},"modified":"2011-12-01T06:14:52","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T06:14:52","slug":"couch-pilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=597","title":{"rendered":"Couch pilot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 0pt none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/scooter_cuddle.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"349\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center><em>A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. &#8211;Proverbs 17:17<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to point out that a bird is also born for adversity. I&#8217;m down for the count with that nasty crud that&#8217;s going around. Having tried to fight it off, I finally gave up last night and retreated to the couch. But I had reinforcements!<\/p>\n<p>Scooter, who&#8217;s going to be nine years old soon, is a faithful watchdog &#8211;er, watchbird. If I&#8217;m sick, he cuddles up under my chin while I sleep, fluffs up, and acts as lookout. Sometimes he&#8217;ll stand post on my shoulder or head, fluffed up and ready. He&#8217;ll take occasional latrine or chow breaks back at his cage, but then he flies back to couch duty.<\/p>\n<p>Birds aren&#8217;t for everyone; they require ENORMOUS amounts of attention. If you do, however, consider a bird purchase, consider them as a little child. They need attention, conversation, and diligence. For instance, I&#8217;ve always let Scooter fly and have never clipped his flight feathers. The price for that, of course, is that I must be extremely meticulous about household hazards, open doors or windows, that kind of thing. And he&#8217;s never left out alone or while there&#8217;s a hot stove or other hazard in the house. But it&#8217;s a price I gladly pay for his company and the joy he brings our family. That&#8217;s especially true on a day like this.<\/p>\n<p>On that note, I&#8217;ve got a fever and my soup is done. Back to the couch for both of us. Thanks to my wife for the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. &#8211;Proverbs 17:17 I&#8217;d like to point out that a bird is also born for adversity. I&#8217;m down for the count with that nasty crud that&#8217;s going around. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=597\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-friends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}