Have had one or two assorted zebra finches and cockatiels, with cats in the house, for the past twenty years. We are now down to one cockatiel and while everything Spaw says is true about them, I do not plan on getting any others after C-more dies.

He doesn't get to get out of his cage at all, which is okay because he was abused early on, like Sins said hers was, and is to terrified of leaving his "nest", but if I ever had another which was actulaly hand-trained, I would want a house big enough to have a separate room where the bird could be out without becoming a new *pressie* for mommy.

My cats do not go outside, at all, except in their enclosed run, so they never get after the wildbirds, either.

Sins, we had peacocks when I was a kid. The male would strut around constantly preening himself while gazing at his reflection in the shiny chrome bumper of mom and dad's '57 or '59 Lincoln. So, we got a big mirror and propped it up against the porch for him. He thought it was another male peacock and bloodied himself trying to fight it, before we could get the mirror away!

They were very interesting birds to have around. I perfected their call, in that fact that is how we came to have them. Some lady had lost hers, came looking at our place because she'd *heard* ours (it was just me calling to hers.) Anyway, she wound up selling us a young pair for $15. In the springtime they would fly up to the tip top gable of the old Victorian house we lived in and sing their racuous ur-uhrssss. In the winter, they would droop in the cold on the bare branches of the big old cottonwood tree. They were a sight to see when the male, esp. took to the wing. We had a small valley around behind our house. It was incredible to see him just take off, long tail with its many eyes ruffling out behind him as he circled the neighbour's lake, then finally came home.

They also make great burglar and other alarms. When I was 13 and ran a nail on a rusty hinge clear through my foot, it was the peacock screaming at the top of his lungs that alerted my mom that something was amiss. Silly, great, ol' bird.

kat