I'd like to thank everyone who has been asking after Nelson's health. I didn't mean for my entry-before-last to be a blog-hanger.

I still don't know what will happen to Nelson in the long run. I haven't asked the veterinarian because I'm afraid of the answer. A bird that can't keep infection away can't be good news. I have a feeling they don't really know anyway. But right now she's on metranidazole and the world is her oyster. She hops around her playpen, chasing every errant jingle-ball that has the temerity to cross her path. She screams at Louie and takes bracing baths in her dog bowl. She's slim and trim - no backed-up sewer syndrome this week, thank you very much - and in fighting form. And speaking of cesspools, she's never smelled better. Nelson's feathers have always had a delightfully fruity odor. Her poop, on the other hand, brought cries of disgust and dismay from friend and foe alike unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. Now, everything about Nelson smells like...fruit. I never would have guessed that this was what she was supposed to be like.

Which brings me to our lesson for the day, one I should have heeded myself. Nelson is a walking cautionary tale for neglecting well-bird exams. Incremental changes in behavior make it almost impossible to spot something bad coming down the pike. In my case, unfortunately, the awful-smelling excrement would not have been a tip-off. Nelson was my first lory (and, no disrespect meant to her, she will probably be my last), and I thought they all smelled like that. But the things that could have told me something was wrong - the infinitesimal slowdown in her habits, the slightly lethargic way she climbed around the cage, the slightly poofier way her bottom looked - I completely missed. But a good avian veterinarian would not have. So do yourself a favor. If it's been a while since your bird has seen a doctor, take it in, preferably to someone who knows your particular species. You never know what they might find.

Today Nelson's new doctor, Lynn Dustin in San Francisco, who's much closer to me than Dr. Van Sant in San Jose, called in some more medication, a sulfa drug, to treat the e. coli Nelson's latest gram stain has revealed. It's waiting for me at the drugstore right now.

The doctors think an old spinal injury may be responsible for damaging a nerve that tells Nelson when to expel waste, and that in turn causes the backups and infections. If this round of drugs doesn't hold, there's a medication Dr. Dustin has in mind that would trigger Nelson to expel. She would take it for the rest of her life. Neither Dr. Dustin nor Dr. Van Sant have ever seen anything like this. My Nelson, the medical oddity.

In the meantime I plan to put all of this out of my head and enjoy the holidays. I've been remembering my first few weeks with Nelson, nine years ago. I thought she was delightful. I couldn't stop thinking about her. I would go to work, where I could ill afford to spend any time goofing off, and lose myself in these ridiculous lovesick daydreams about the little red bird waiting for me at home. I couldn't wait for 5 o'clock to roll around so I could go home and see her again. It's kind of like that now. My heart soars in the morning when I hear Nelson's waking trills because I know she's all right. I can't pet Nelson enough, can't hold her enough. When I run an errand, I look forward to returning home and seeing that she's still all right. It's a wonderful thing, being given a second chance. It's like being in love again.

All this over a bird. But she's my bird. She's my little Nelson and I am stone in love with her, to borrow a line from the Stylistics. Now is that crazy? Or what?

I go to make a blog entry in my Diary of a Mad Parrot Lover and what do I find but that all along I've actually been keeping a Diary of a Mad Parrot Owner - at least here, where the logo was completely wrong, if not throughout the rest of ParrotChronicles.com, where I think I have the name right. Which only goes to show how truly mad I am and how truly worried I should be about the rest of the ezine. What other blatant errors have I been waltzing by for the last six months, oblivious to them because by now they've become as familiar as the living room furniture? I hope I haven't been calling the Behavior column "Cranky Birds" or Ask Dr. Harris "Ask Dr. Spock". But we've caught it now, and everything will be all right. I don't think "diary" and "owner" really go together. Besides "owner" having become very non-PC (but I use it anyway because there's no way I'm going to waterlog all my sentences about the relationship between a captive bird and its caretaker with the phrase "companion parrot guardian"), it doesn't fit the gist. Mere owners don't chew all their nails off while waiting for life-and-death verdicts from the bird vet. Owners don't keep diaries about their birds, on the Internet or otherwise, and they don't spoonfeed orange juice to a cranky parrot to get it to go to bed. Parrot lovers, on the other hand, do all of these mad things and more.

I might have known that something as complicated sounding as Nelson's condition would not resolve itself simply, either. Her infection seems to have come back, so she will go back to the doctor for a followup next week. But in the meantime, she seems fairly healthy. Leaving the house for more than a few hours makes me nervous because I'm not around to make sure she's not neglecting her bathroom duties - a side effect of her problem, or possibly the cause of it, the veterinarian isn't sure. But when I return she always seems to be able to catch up. To encourage her I take her "flying" in the garden, letting her flap her wings from her perch on my finger as I trot around in wide circles, since she can't fly on her own. Bouncing her also helps.

Still, some days nothing seems to make her happy, not being in her cage, not being presented with some Odwalla delicacy in a spoon, not even being on my shoulder snuggled under my hair. This was one of those mornings. She seemed desperate to go somewhere. So I set her on the floor, where she's rarely allowed, and followed her through the house. She ran through the dining room, into the kitchen and to the top of the stairs. A clear-enough request to go outside. So out we went to the aviary. I set her in the grass and she scampered up the bird ladder that leans against the netting. She climbed straight to the platform in the corner, where the morning sun was beginning to warm the garden on this sixty-something day.

"It's not too cold?" Paul asked when I came back in. "Naw," I said. "She's fine." As an afterthought, I grabbed a slice of apple out of her cage and took it out to the platform, where I set it down beside her. She tucked into it, al fresco dining clearly whetting her appetite.

I don't know what's going to happen with Nelson. I'm willing to take her to the ends of the earth - and my bank account, if necessary - to see this through. In the meantime, I savor our time together, already several weeks longer than I had thought possible.

Not too long ago, her piping cries waking me early in the morning put me in a foul mood. Another good night's rest interrupted by a screaming bird. Now, I lie in bed and smile. Nelson's in good voice. She'll be with me another day. I can hold her and scratch her head, enjoy her breathtaking colors and charming antics. Some days I hardly want to leave the house, I don't want to miss a moment.

In this world people are starving, dying of incurable diseases, waiting for transplants, suffering abuse at the hands of their own governments, and I'm not doing anything about it. Right now, Nelson, a deserving creature in her own right, ripped from her home in Indonesia 13 years ago and dumped on a California freeway, is my cause, my little corner of responsibility. I'll worry about the big stuff later.

One small, well bird, so happy to see her human she wriggles: priceless. For everything else - the x-rays, bloodwork, cavity drains, antibiotics and three nights in the hospital - there's MasterCard. Or, in my case, Visa.

So what if we have to put retirement off for a few years? Having Nelson back in the bosom of her family is worth it. (In truth, we'll likely retire on time. But Europe next year? Questionable.)

Thursday night, Dr. Van Sant gave the official go-ahead to come and get Nelson. On Friday, I headed back down to San Jose to the bird hospital. It was a much different trip this time. Three days earlier, with one of those damn confusing MapQuest printouts clutched in one hand, five freeway exchanges in front of me, and a dying friend in the seat beside me, you could say the overall mood was one of slit-your-wrists desperation. This time, I knew how to get there and I felt giddy with anticipation. I was going to see Nelson again! Nelson, who was not doomed - who was, in fact, enjoying heartier health than ever - was coming home!

Although I feel deeply for my animals, I don't harbor any delusions that they would not trip happily into the arms of the next owner if something happened to me. Nelson in particular has always struck me as a practical, no-nonsense, clear-eyed kind of bird, not one to lavish an undue amount of affection on anyone, not even me, her chosen human. So I wasn't sure what kind of reception to expect when I walked through the doors of the bird hospital. In fact, I wasn't even sure she would remember me.

But when I walked up to her incubator, so anxious to see her I could barely contain my enthusiasm in front of the hospital staff, Nelson looked up, launched into the one-note cry of hers that means, "I want something," and began pacing back and forth. I opened the door and she stepped onto my finger and craned her neck up toward my face, asking to be let onto my shoulder. Once there, she rained feather-tongued kisses on my cheek, bounced, and rubbed her face against mine. She trilled and chortled. I could have sworn I saw her smile.

I had always suspected it, but here was proof that Nelson did have a heart, and it was unequivocally mine.

On the way home, when traffic had slowed to a stop on the bridge, I threw a towel in my lap and reached back and opened the door to Nelson's cage. She stopped crying, climbed onto my hand, and scrambled up my arm. After standing on my shoulder with her head buried in my hair for a minute, she spent the rest of the drive scooting all over my upper body, bouncing and chortling. (Disclaimer: It's a very very bad idea to let your bird loose in the car. Don't ever ever do it. Unless, of course, it's a very very special occasion.) "Hello, Nelson," I said. She pressed her face against mine.

I am having one heckuva happy Thanksgiving. Hope you do, too.

Standing here looking out my window
My nights are long and my days are cold
'Cause I don't have you. --Case

Even Paul -- who does not spend hours observing how our birds hold their wings, move, eat, vocalize -- could tell something was wrong when he changed the papers in Nelson's cage.

"She didn't scream at me," he said, "or try to bite me." I gave him an alarmed look. "Yeah," he said, frowning. "She's off."

I went in to see for myself. Sure enough, Nelson was different, quiet, lethargic. She refused corn, her favorite food. I picked her up and heard something. Her breathing. An almost inaudible asthmatic stitch in every breath. "Nelson's in trouble," I told Paul, my heart sinking.

We spent the most beautiful November day in memory at a San Francisco animal emergency room. It was not an entirely unpleasant way to while away an afternoon. With the average wait to see the veterinarian at over three hours, everyone there had given up their Sunday to seek help for their animal, so I felt we were among kindred spirits. There was even a young couple with a guinea pig who had kidney stones. In the course of the afternoon, he got $175 worth of x-rays and went into surgery.

The other patients were mostly dogs that had found themselves on the losing end of a skirmish with a pitbull or rottweiler. We met a realtor-surfer-dude whose large mix had a skinned ear, which the dog kept flapping against his master's khakis, splattering them with blood.

The vet didn't know much about birds. "Take her to a vet tomorrow," she advised. Right. Before we left, Nelson expressed her opinion by decorating the front of the vet's white coat.

We went home with a bottle of antiobiotics. I put Nelson in a hospital cage and watched. That night, she hopped and bobbed her head. Back to normal. Problem solved.

But the next day she drooped again. She hardly ate, and - the last thing we would ever have expected from Nelson, who can fill a Mason jar a day - she could not void. On Tuesday, my panic rising, I put her in the car and headed for an avian veterinarian I'd heard about, Fern Van Sant, 50 miles away, in San Jose.

We arrived at 10:30, and for the next four and half hours the staff of For the Birds tried everything they could think of to help Nelson, who seemed to be growing heavier and wearier by the hour. Nelson got x-rayed, twice, and a quarter cup of mysterious fluid drained from her belly. In between procedures she weakly climbed onto my shoulder and preened my neck. Finally, Dr. Van Sant tried one more thing - draining Nelson's cloaca.

It was a nasty little procedure, but it did the trick. No longer feeling bloated, with who-knows-how-many-ounces of poop pressing against her heart, Nelson was back. Bam! Just like that. Her breathing grew quiet, she tried to bite the good doctor, she had a lot of preening to catch up on, she was hungry. I left at 3 o'clock, after depositing Nelson in an incubator outfitted with a cozy white towel and her favorite toy, a cowhide ring.

Dr. Van Sant's call Tuesday evening to say Nelson was continuing to do well brought tears of relief, to us both. Despite the shabby way she treats him, Paul is fond of Nelson, too. Now it's been two days since she went into the bird hospital, and the house has never been quieter. When I walk by the bird room, I automatically look for Nelson in her cage, but it stands empty. With every positive report we get from Dr. Van Sant, my numb certainty that Nelson is gone forever is slowly being replaced by the certainty that she will dodge this bullet. That kicked-in-the-gut feeling is easing, and despite warnings to myself not to feel too optimistic, I walk around a little less like a zombie today. Surely we will find out what caused Nelson's intestinal obstruction, and everything will be all right again. Surely she will live many more happy years taunting Louie the macaw, screaming for her corn and, in her more endearing moments, playing hide-and-go-seek in my cupped hands. Come home, Nelson. We miss you.

We put Louie in charge of the bird room last night while we went to recharge our musical batteries at the Warfield with Duncan Sheik and Ben Folds. We came to see the former; we left new fans of the latter. Dunc's been downgraded to a supporting act these days, more's the pity because we didn't get to hear all our first-album favorites. Except for a mosh pit of devoted fans on the floor, people talked, arrived at and left their seats, and in general did not pay much attention during his 45 minutes. What's more, by the time I got to the "merchandise desk," as the announcer so charmingly put the chance to meet Duncan, the only thing left was a t-shirt not in my size. I bought it anyway. But who is the long-hair on the front where Duncan absently wrote, "XX00, Duncan" while sneaking sidelong glances at the groupies against the wall when he was supposed to be fawning over me, a paying customer? Certainly not him. "Maybe that's his altar ego," Paul offered.

There's nothing like a concert to put you back in touch with your relative youth. The more things change.. "Lots of loco weed out tonight," Paul observed. "Really strong."

"Maybe that's because our ushers are crouched down behind our seats smoking it," I said. Behind our row, the last in a nosebleed balcony, was a handy pocket of space where one could go to sit and rest in between seating people, discuss world events, and enjoy a joint. Two by two the Warfield staff came and paid their respects.

I was so turned off by his Web site, I had regarded the Ben Folds part of the evening as dispensable. "A poor man's Joe Jackson," I told Paul. "We can leave after Duncan if you want to." Now I'm sorry I spent so much time in the Duncan line missing Folds' act. He was great in person - one long frenetic novelty-song performance that never wore thin because he's such a fantastic keyboardist and knows how to elicit laughs by pairing shocking lyrics with ballad-like piano playing (think Sam Kinison's angry love songs, which began with swelling arpeggios and ended with him banging the instrument and screaming, "You broke my heart!! I want my records back, you deleted-for-a-family-blog!!") Most the audience seemed to know each song front to back and sang along. On others, Folds taught us some simple background "ahhs" we could use to sing along. Anyone who does audience singalongs has my vote.

When we emerged from the theater onto San Francisco's seedy Market Street, the night was crisp, clear and freshly washed in memories of another evening well-spent in the company of rock.

Louie's almost forgiven me. The Great Toenail Clipping Incident almost a week behind us, he's allowing me to pet his tail again and no longer shies away when I open the door to his cage in the morning. I guess someone has to be the macaw flesh-eating ogre in these cases, and Louie's chosen me for the role. Never mind that Paul's the one who sweet-talks him onto his arm, only to grab his head from behind and hold him against a towel on the floor. Nope, it has to be me, the one wielding the clippers. It didn't help that I made half his nails bleed - and that was after waiting a week between incremental clips. Guess we'll have to wait longer next time.

Clipping Louie has a strange effect on his feather picking: It stops. It's almost as if he suddenly realizes he has more serious things to worry about than tracking down and ripping out that piece of down - there are murderers! In this very house! Out to get him! Creatures he had once trusted implicitly. Then food continues to arrive in the hands of the fearsome brutes (that would be me) and his terror once more gradually fades to a nebulous concern over shiny objects that resemble the torture device applied to his feet.

But actually, the feather picking was already winding down before the first clip a couple of weeks ago, and I'm hoping this is the start of something permanent. *the feathers on his LEGS* (SHHH! don't let him hear me say this!) *the feathers on his legs are growing in! more than ever before! and he sits for long periods without preening! some days there are only three or four pieces of down on the bottom of the cage!

Do I sound half crazed with some sort of feather obsession? Ask any owner of a feather picker. They'll tell you. I'm going to go look at him now. Just a surreptitious glance at the aforementioned legs. Not so obvious that he can tell I'm looking at his legs, mind you. That's counterproductive. That gets *him* starting to think about his legs again, and that's no good. I'll keep you posted.

Apparently theme funerals are all the rage nowadays. Was mom a great cook with a big heart? Then may we suggest "Big Mama's Kitchen," a down-home culinary-theme set with a kitchen table, sink, refrigerator and range with a Thanksgiving turkey basting inside (actually, I'm not sure about those last couple of items, but if they're not included they should be)? Was Uncle Ernie a fishing fanatic? Then cast him into the Great Beyond inside this little wooden number in the shape of a carp. (Okay, I made that one up, too - the fish coffin in the newsstory looked more like a koi.)

With every other hobby under the sun getting ink, I couldn't help but wonder what a bird-themed final-going-away party would look like. Your typical civilian would probably picture it as something outdoorsy, or a canary singing prettily from an ornate cage, or scarlet macaws placed decoratively around the room on perches. But in order for the mourners to get a real feel for the bird lover's life, I think the floor would have to be covered in papers and seed and bits of fruit and there would have to be a soundtrack with a lot of screeching and "Hello?" repeated over and over again. A tattered couch could sit over in the corner and a small table with chewed legs could hold a package of Zupreem, ceramic dishes and a mister. But the coffin - and no, I am not thinking of a very large shoebox lined with Kleenex - could be a beautiful boat of a blue-and-gold macaw, perhaps, or an red-and-purple eclectus. I like to think of entry from the side, as if under a protective wing. But then all of this would be entirely too gaudy for most bird people I know. The truth is, ashes out in the garden where everyone else is, in their shoeboxes, sounds just fine to me.

Oy, Halloween must have brought me here. On to a cheerier topic. Did I mention Louie made a fine ambassador of the household handing out candy last night? He chirped "Hello!" when people arrived and flared his wings and pinned and flashed when we opened the door. He was more popular than the popcorn balls.

We've been spending extra time with Nelson lately, doing research for a sidebar I'm writing about hands-on training for the next issue of ParrotChronicles.com. It's made me marvel anew at how fundamentally different birds are from dogs and cats. How much fundamentally wilder they are.

Nelson has seen Paul almost every day of her life for the last seven years. He's fed her, sweet-talked her, never raised his voice to her. Were she a skittish canine or feline, the tender treatment would have brought her around a long time ago. A tentative few steps toward the kind human, a lick of the hand or a rub against the leg, perhaps. But not Nelson. And not many wild-caught parrots like her, who carry an ingrained flop-on-the-floor-wings-flapping-screaming dread of people. No matter how many more years of kind treatment may pass, Nelson will always be this way with Paul. I would be willing to bet all the money I've spent on bird food, cages and vet visits over the last 20 years on it. Hence the mountain is coming to Mohammed.

In these early stages of taming by Paul, Nelson would rather do just about anything to avoid contact. So I hold her in my lap while he attempts to pet her. There are unavoidable casualties involved with this approach, such as my clothes. We don't call Nelson "smelly Nelly" for nothing. Like most lories, she empties when excited, and it doesn't take much to upset her. So I inevitably wind up with a lapful of processed lory nectar.

You get used to it. "Don't stop now," I said during one recent session. "I'm already trashed." So Paul petted her some more.

In addition to stomachs of steel, we have to possess hands like those of Benito Santiago. "Whoa!" Paul exclaimed as Nelson, who cannot fly, did a spectacular backflip off my lap. Just before she tumbled over my knees I grabbed her. "Nice catch!" Paul said. Nelson sat in my hands looking pleased, like a gymnast who had just executed a perfect dismount off the balance beam.

After we were done I washed up and changed out of the redolent Nelson-trashed jeans into a pair of clean, identical jeans. "I thought you cleaned up," Paul said as he passed by me sitting at the computer. I decided to tease him. "Naw, I'll just wear these the rest of the day."

"Okay," he said, walking away.

It's so sad.

Both birds need nail trims. If only Louie were as blase about this bit of necessary grooming as Nelson is. Bless his birdie heart. He struggles, he bites, he pants all wrapped up in his towel, as if facing the Texas chainsaw massacre-er himself. Nelson has learned to regard the clippers as a toy. I've discovered that by allowing her to play with them a bit before beginning, she'll sit on my hand and let me sneak in a clip, nail by nail, until they're all done. I rarely even accidentally clip too close anymore and make her bleed.

The clippers-as-toy concept has worked so well with Nelson, I've decided to try it with Louie. The problem is he's about as likely to regard the clippers as a playmate as I would the vacuum cleaner and would prefer to stay about as far away, with that same wild-eyed look.

But I'm trying anyway. I've taken to keeping the clippers on the end table by the chair in the living room. In the evening, when Louie is sitting on my knee, I pick up the clippers and move them to the arm of the chair we're sitting in. Louie gives them the hairy eyeball but allows me to continue petting him. I let the clippers sit there oh, say, five minutes. Then I move them a little closer, balancing them on my other knee. Louie is not stupid. He notices something weird is going on. The shiny metal object is coming closer. Cue the theme to 'Jaws.' I move the clippers to the leg Louie is sitting on and he's had enough. He's leaving. He climbs down my leg and scrambles over to Paul on the couch, who wields nothing more menacing than a TV remote control.

My idea for making Louie's next nail trim into play time is tanking. At this rate Louie's nails will be grown back on themselves before he's won over. So I guess next weekend we'll have to bring out the towel. Paul and I both dread this. The screaming, the whining, the struggling. And it's tough on Louie, too. Maybe I'll do the clipper thing again tonight. Couldn't hurt to try.

A strange and wonderful thing is happening. Louie, Paul's bird, wants to be with me. Not the okay-I'll-sit-here-as-long-as-you-pet-me kind of being with me, but he really wants me. My company. It started one evening a week or two ago while we were watching TV in the living room. Louie began hopping from foot to foot, body language for "take me to the cage, NOW, before I turn your $2,000 traditional couch into a Jackson Pollack." Then a strange thing happened. When Paul swung a leg over the edge of the couch for Louie to use as a ladder to the floor, instead of running to his cage Louie scampered across the room to me. Little ol' me, who for all the lovely times we've had together Louie has never chosen of his own accord. I was curled up in a chair. I put one foot on the floor and Louie climbed my leg into my lap, where he settled in for an expected head scratch. I looked over at Paul in wide-eyed amazement. He looked at me, mouth open.

It was like the high school quarterback had just sat down beside me at lunch and asked me to the prom.

Yeah, I know, get a life. But wouldn't you be excited if the quarterback climbed into your lap? (Or cheerleader? depending on your preferences.)

Anyway, now, in the evenings, Louie is as likely to want to sit in my lap as Paul's. "Oh, go see your girlfriend!" Paul will say, pretending to be hurt, whenever Louie asks to be let off his lap. "Oh, he still loves you," I say in my most supportive tone. "Although.."

"Although what?"

"He definitely seems to be loving me more these days, doesn't he?"

Hee hee.

Nobody slept much last night. Least of all Louie, who climbed laps around his cage from about 4 a.m. on. The problem? Wild beasts, at least two of them, woke us all up around that time brawling outside the open downstairs window. It was one of those ongoing sounds that gradually rouse you and leave you stupid with grogginess for a few moments, not really knowing or caring what's going on, until you're finally fully awake and your blood curdles: "What the hell is that?"

Remember Fluffy, I believe they called him, the crated beast in one of the Twilight Zone: the Movie segments? These things, whatever they were, could have done Fluffy's voiceover. They snarled, they spat, they snorted, the sounds too thick and baritone to be merely a couple of cats having an argument. They were evil in the black of night, and they were right outside the window.

I got up and tiptoed over to the sill and tried to open the slats on one side to take a peek. They heard me and scattered. So much for unstoppable malevolence. They were probably a couple of raccoons arguing over who got to swim in the pond next.

The window to the birds' room upstairs was closed, but Louie heard them, too. The rest of the night he clambered around his cage. A couple of hours later Paul gave up and went upstairs to comfort him. I went back to sleep.

All morning Louie was on his guard, lest the snarling monsters came back. He sat on his perch, stock still and wide-eyed. Even after he relaxed enough to play, he bolted down to the cage door every time one of us passed by, just in case. It must be a tough life, being a prey animal with eyes on the sides of your head. Poor Louie.

A week ago Saturday, I got up at the crack of dawn and drove for three hours to see a guy who bills himself as the Bird Whisperer. It's what it sounds like: This guy, Ken Globus, says he can tame wild birds in a minimum of time. And he was giving a workshop sponsored by the Gold Country Avicultural Society, a bird club located in Columbia, Calif., a wide spot in the road just outside of Yosemite known for its charming Gold Rush-themed restaurants, stores and hotels.

Globus hasn't made any friends on the Internet, where people are only too happy to demonize what sounds to them like irresponsible bird handling. Critics hear the slick stage name and the claims, and they automatically regard Globus as a dangerous crock who's trampling all over what they consider a very serious topic: the best, most humane way to tame parrots.

Well, I went, I saw, and Globus conquered my own disbelief - for the most part. I think maybe it's time for his critics to lighten up a little.

I won't give it all away, because the November-December issue of ParrotChronicles.com will have the whole story, but the Bird Whisperer ain't just whisperin' Dixie. When it comes to breaking through to a stubbornly skittish bird, he's onto something. Stay tuned..

Last week I dragged Paul out to a concert at the Concord Pavilion (I still like to call it that, even though the San Francisco Chronicle has stuck its name on this lovely outdoor amphitheater in one of those distasteful corporate-naming arrangements). Although at least half our music patronage these days is devoted to oldies acts from the 70s and 80s, every once and while we like to get out and hear what the young'uns are doing. For a few years we've been admiring Third Eye Blind and the Goo Goo Dolls, and now there's this cute little 19-year-old named Vanessa Carlton who sings "A Million Miles." All three were playing.

It must have been really hot in Concord that day, because the weather at the Pavilion that night was the best we've ever experienced. It started out warm and didn't degenerate into whipping bone-chilling winds until the last hour of the show, when we used the blanket we had brought to sit on to wrap up like human burritos.

It was fun hearing all our favorite songs, but cranky middle-aged thoughts about the performers kept popping into my head. The lead singer for the Goo-Goos had way too many tattoos. His stupid mysogynistic rock-star comments about women ("Why can't they be like cars? With every new one you have to learn how to drive all over again") made me wonder what example he was setting for all the teenage boys there, hooting along with him, and what that was telling the teenage girls. When a camera zoomed in on the bass player he stuck his tongue out and waggled it. Oh puh-leeze. That's so Kiss/80s. There were way too many head-banging songs that sounded like noise to me. Why can't they have at least a little melody and variance in beat like good hard rock, like Led Zeppelin? I thought Vanessa was cute, jumping around and growling out her Alanis Morisette-inspired lyrics, just like a junior Janis Japlin.

I guess part of the problem is there's just too much rock-n-roll water under the bridge. I have so many fond memories of going to see the trailblazers -- Linda Ronstadt, Billy Joel when he still wore sneakers and a jacket and leaped over his piano, Chicago, Hall & Oates, the Doobies, and many more -- that everyone else seems like a wet-behind-the-ears imposter. But the voices - oh boy, when the song is good, the great vocals never grow old, and that's reason enough to celebrate every wave of new bands. "What a great voice Johnny Resnick has, huh?" we said to each other lugging our ice chest and blanket back to the car. "Yeah, a lot like Daryl Hall. I could listen to him all day."

"Carla, come here! Quick!"

If I have any complaints about my dear husband, it's that I can never tell whether those words mean disaster or a nice surprise he simply cannot wait to share. In the past, it's gone both ways.

This time, it was something nice. Out on the front lawn, cavorting in the sprinklers, was a sharp-shinned hawk. He dipped his body, he flared his wings, he squatted like a hen incubating eggs. He stood up and did that bouncy "here's my imitation of walking on hot coals" walk that grounded hawks do. I had never seen a bird go through so many different contortions to catch a few drops of water.

He was beautiful, with his dark wings and speckled breast and skinny legs. "His talons don't look like much," Paul observed. It was true. He looked small on the ground, not the monster he appeared to be the few times I spotted him out in the garden, terrorizing the local birds. Certainly not the horrible creature that had frightened Louie into macaw screams and whimpers not too long ago out in the aviary.

This was just an overgrown neighborhood bird, cooling off for a few minutes on a 95-degree day in this unexpected rainshower he had found.

Even Louie, watching from Paul's arms, was nonplussed.

We watched the hawk, laughing delightedly at his antics, and then the teenage offspring of the neighbors across the street pulled up, shouting something out the car window, and the moment was over. The hawk stepped out of his bath, crouched and flapped into a nearby tree. He sat on a branch for a few seconds and then flew out of sight.

But for a few moments, we forgot our cares and daily routine and allowed something outside ourselves unrelated to television, a movie or even a book to transport us with awe. It was a small thing, but an unexpected moment of peace, the kind you're always striving for but that's almost impossible to create. If there's anything I can say about what happened a year ago that perhaps no one else hasn't already, it's that I hope the survivors are having those moments again. Unexpected interludes of deep happiness and release and wonder. Because they're what make life worth living, even after something horrible has happened. Peace.

Sometimes I feel like life is completely the opposite of the title of that Bruce Willis movie about the guy who's curiously impervious to train wrecks and bullets. Life is breakable, way too breakable. My new computer this summer didn't work, so I had to send it back for a refund, minus shipping charges of $132. In the meantime, I battle an increasingly cranky PC loaded down with way too many software applications that the manufacturers have not quite figured out how to make completely compatible with all the hardware, and vice versa, and I wade through dozens of worm-infected e-mails every day, the creations of creepy hackers who think it's amusing to waste other people's time and destroy their work. The TV-VCR I got for my birthday six months ago is still sitting at a service center down in San Leandro; I'm waiting for Panasonic to replace it, if they ever get around to it. In the meantime, the woman who runs the repair place and I have become so chummy we may have to exchange Christmas gifts this year; that is, if I don't sic "7 On Your Side" on her and Panasonic for consumer fraud.

It's not just electronics that stop working, of course. Human relations seem tenuous these days, too, but maybe they've always been. Road rage is a popular topic in the local paper. People get mugged all the time in the self-described friendly little town of Alameda. Every few months in the Bay Area, some "really nice guy" goes berserk and offs his entire family.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, we got a letter in the mail from our next-door neighbor, whom I'll call Jack (and who does not own a computer and will never see or hear about this entry). "Dear neighbor," it said. "It's really inconsiderate of you to drop branches on my side of the fence when you trim. Please stop it." Now, I know something like this is a drop in the bucket compared with other injustices, inconveniences and mayhem we humans perpetrate on one another. But it really depressed me. This was a neighbor we've had a great relationship with for the last five years. What had happened?

We felt angry, then hurt, then concerned, then the whole round of feelings again. We were angry because the trees Paul had trimmed were Jack's trees, growing over our yard, so not only were we having to trim Jack's trees, but he was complaining about the quality of work. Why didn't he trim his own @#$#@$ trees, then? We were hurt because it was an attack out of nowhere, or so we thought. Didn't Jack want to maintain our great friendship? Didn't all the exchanged pleasantries, all the over-the-fence chats that sometimes turned into heart to hearts, mean anything? He was throwing us away, over nothing. And then we were concerned, because it was so out of character. We feared Jack must have suffered some sort of emotional or health breakdown.

"Let's go over there right now with this letter, and just tell him how hurt we are and ask what the matter is," I said. "You go," said Paul. "I'll say something I'll regret."

So I went, but Jack wasn't at home.

Two weeks passed, and somehow we never managed to be out in our yard at the same time Jack was out in his and vice versa. Paul trimmed a little more, some different trees farther down the shared fenceline, being extra careful not to let any trimmings fall on Jack's side. Jack responded by hacking the trees to waist level. Every time I went out into the backyard, I found myself wondering if Jack owned a gun.

I hated it.

Then a couple of days ago, I went out back to get Louie out of the aviary, and a disembodied voice from on high and to my right said, "Hi, Carla."

I was startled to see Jack perched in one of his trees, sawing the limbs off. By now, he had removed almost every branch touching our fence. Not only were there no more branches for Paul to trim, we could see Jack's house clearly for the first time because he had almost entirely removed the dense foliage between our properties.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" he said.

"You're mad at us," I said hopefully.

And then everything I had hoped for but did not expect happened. Jack apologized and said he wished he had never sent that letter. It was stupid, he felt like a stupid old man, and please forgive him.

I decided to try out our hypothesis over why all this had happened, and apologized too, if Jack had ever accidentally overheard us complain about trimming his trees. "We never meant to hurt your feelings if that's what happened." And Jack said, not unkindly, "Well, you did."

And that was all it took. Our neighbor was not a psycho, some things really could be made whole again, there really was some sense and security in a world where everything else sometimes seems to be falling apart.

That night, I made Jack a peach cobbler and took it over. "A peace offering," I said, and he hugged me. A couple of days later I found the pan at our front door with three new dishtowels wrapped in a pink ribbon with a thank-you card sitting on top.

Jack has stopped hacking his trees, and once again I walk in my garden unafraid. Some things may not be fixable, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and walk away every time another little piece of our lives breaks. When it comes to my cherished neighbors at least, the world is unbreakable after all.

Now that we've gotten summer out of the way in the California Bay Area, we can have summer, as God intended the season to be.

When we drove down to Monterey weekend before last to attend the Association of Avian Veterinarians conference, we left behind windy, misty 50-degree weather. A couple of days later, we returned to a 95-degree day followed by a delightfully warm night, the kind of pleasant let's-go-for-a-walk-at-dusk summer evening that people in most other parts of the country take for granted. In other words, it's September and swimsuit season has finally arrived in San Francisco. Yahoo!

This was my first time at an AAV conference, the annual meeting of avian-board-certified and avian-focused veterinarians from all over the world. We stayed at Merritt House, a kind of cool adobe hotel a block away from the conference center with a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace. The brochure showed the hotel from the backside you never see, with trees and grass, which made it look like it was a bed and breakfast out in the country, but aside from this bit of misleading marketing and a snarly check-in person, we enjoyed our stay, even after I opened the doors to the fireplace to release some heat and nearly asphyxiated us. They really should have posted a sign or something.

Being a poverty-stricken journalist, I attended the one comp day allowed as press. Now I'm sorry I didn't stay all four days. If you can imagine being the proverbial fly on the wall when your internist and his or her buddies discuss you and other patients over coffee, this was something like it, only with veterinarians. Nothing too juicy here, mind you, aside from the occasional crack about clueless pet owners, but fascinating nonetheless to hear their side of the story. For instance, one speaker talked about "perchside" manner - what should veterinarians do when we the clients want to go back with our birds to watch a procedure? Should they gas difficult birds or not?

As a bonus, I got to meet some of the people I've known only through e-mail and phone calls up until now, including ParrotChronicles.com's Behavior columnist, bird trainer Steve Martin, who gave a great talk and slide and video show, right after another trainer, Joe Carvalho, free flew his two blue-and-gold macaws a couple of times around the room.

You could have heard a feather drop as the two birds passed over our heads. No squawking, not even the sound of wings moving air. Just every eye in the room on the birds, and I have to say it made my heart leap a little to watch them perform as requested. Such magnificent birds, working hard to do the trainer's bidding. It's a big responsibility to treat these captive creatures right.

I also got to meet several directors of large rescue groups in this country, including Eileen McCarthy of the Midwest Avian Adoption and Rescue Services; Julie Murad of the Gabriel Foundation; and Sybil Erden of The Oasis. Great! And it was very nice to see James Harris, DVM, who writes ParrotChronicles.com's Ask Dr. Harris column, again.

I don't think I realized how much esteem in which I hold veterinarians until this conference. Every time someone overlooked my press badge and mistook me for a veterinarian - "where's your practice?" "do you see many birds?" - I got a small jolt of unexpected, if completely unwarranted, pride. Me, a veterinarian? Do I look like one? Why, thank you very much.

I've been a bad blogger, neglecting my diary for two weeks. Part of that was getting the latest issue of ParrotChronicles.com out the door. The rest I blame on deflation after the excitement of successfully giving Louie his medicine. The first couple of days he was on antibiotics, he picked nary a feather. Instant success! But then we watched the few feathers that had grown in on his thighs, the sentry feathers, disappear one by one. Only the owner of a feather-plucking bird could tell you how depressing that is.

The only lasting change coinciding with Louie's treatment is almost complete cessation of picking when he's with us. That means something, doesn't it? For the first time in years, he will sit with us in the evenings and simply grind his beak happily. Or he will preen, without pulling. For a very long time now, I've often had to whisk him back to his cage in the evenings because I can't stand the sight and sound of feathers being pulled. It's like watching someone yank out handsful of hair.

For a few days, despite the loss of the leg feathers, Louie looked sleek and full-feathered. Then he began to molt, and feathers have been drifting to the floor for the last week like fall leaves. Now, he looks more ragged than before we dosed him for parasites. But I remain hopeful that somehow we have put a dent in this problem. Some way, somehow in the future, he will stop feather plucking. Completely.

In the meantime, life goes on. When the camera pulls back on Louie sitting in his cage, in our house, in our town, on our continent, on our planet, until he and we and everything we know becomes an inconsequential speck, I realize that one pet bird's self-destructive personal grooming habits does not amount to much in the grand scheme of things. It's just an odd little detail in a universe filled with many, much more mind-bending, details. But if we all neglected the details of our lives, the greater picture would fall apart, right? And Louie is one very important detail to this family. We're not gonna give up on you, buddy.