A dad who works from home, a mom who runs a bustling homeschool, six children, four pet fish, one house plant, and a property run amok with squirrels, chipmunks, and deer is not enough for us . . . Mary is now the proud owner of pet finches!
We briefly forayed into having pet turtles in an outdoor enclosure years ago, when we did not know it was illegal to keep wild-caught turtles, but mostly we have focused on raising kiddos, not animals.
Then, John bought fish a year and a half ago, during the fall when he was ten (a trip down memory lane here) and has been an exemplary fish owner. He has since increased his tank size, navigated losing fish, buying new fish, branching out into owning snails (and losing snails, too), replacing all his plastic plants with live plants and learning how to care for those, testing his waters, cleaning his tank, and so forth, all on his own dime. He has been an exemplary pet owner.
Ten seems like a great age for first pets.
So, now Mary is ten and she fell in love with the idea of finches . . . and then read up on them and compiled a 25-page typed document of research for us. We did not even research other types of birds because finches seemed like such a good fit for our family: they are small, not big; they live five years, not ten, twenty, or eighty; they have a tiny, unobtrusive bird song, not a racket; and they are birds to watch and not hold.
Next time we buy finches, we intend to go through a real finch specialist seller, but this time (somewhat regrettably) we ended up at a big box pet store where Mary purchased one zebra finch and one society finch.
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| Just a little bit excited |
We've set up their aviary in our den and it's just the perfect place for stopping to watch them and enjoy their flutterings and quiet chirping.
I did not think to cut our school goals in half this first week to account for the fact that every time I would turn around, the kids would all be crowded around and fawning over the birds instead of doing their work.
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| Look at that dreamy smile! |
Introducing . . . Heidi (the zebra finch--orange cheeks) and Clara (the society finch--white)! They are named such from the classic Heidi (1880) by Johanna Spyri, Heidi being the healthy country girl who befriends Clara, the refined and wealthy crippled girl in a wheelchair. In our case, little Clara has a broken foot--so the pet store let us adopt her for free instead of buy her for money--she having caught her foot in the bars about a month ago. She has been cleared by the vet and her foot is as healed as it will ever be, but she does not put weight on it and needs some special accommodations in her cage to function. Of course, this makes Mary feel even more tenderly toward her.
(As an aside, I strongly recommend "Heidi" as a book to read aloud to children or have them read themselves, as young as they're able. It contains enough male and female characters to appeal to both boys and girls. "Heidi" offers a deep theme of Christian sacrifice and suffering that is important for the Catholic of any age to come to understand. And our favorite movie version by far, actually authentic to the book, is the 2005 version here.
It turns out that the finch girls love to mimic music, so they begin singing when children play piano, violin, sing songs, or make the computer beep.
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| Mary serenading the birds |
They are so tiny that the finches just plump right down inside of their seed tray to eat.
Clara does not like her typical hanging nest, so we went back and bought her a little cup nest, where she cozied right in minutes before we covered her cage that night. Note the St. Francis medal Mary affixed to the cage (as John did to the fish tank, too).
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| Clara going night-night |
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