An observation

Today I found myself pondering about what goes on in Dumpling’s head when he shits. Not a normal thing to think perhaps, but he always looks vacantly surprised when it happens. Like he’s only half aware that he is excreting certain substances. And yet the half of him that catches on to what’s going on is mortified beyond words by the whole business. He twitches and looks around the room with abrupt paranoid head movements, and when he notices that he had witnesses he gets frantic like, “how did that happen? I swear it’s the first time. Let me clean that right up. I’m so sorry!”

Only he doesn’t clean up. He never cleans up. He just goes right ahead and flutters about his cage in blind panic, chirping to himself. Until at some indiscriminate point in time his little brain resets and he forgets about the whole affair. He calms down, finds a comfortable spot on one of his perches and casually starts rearranging his feathers while eyeing off his food bowl.

He goes through this process at least fifty thousand gazillion times a day – so genuinely outraged, so convincingly rattled and so conveniently forgetful. So yeah, I am suspicious. I think he knows, and I am not above fitting him with a tiny nappy (and a top hat – for my own personal reasons) and toilet-training him.

These are perfectly sane and reasonable thoughts to have.