Hard boiled eggs and nuts

Pets, they certainly weren’t my idea, I can tell you. In addition to all the usual Christmas festivities, we here at Abiogenesis Towers have had to contend with a couple of pet-related incidents which haven’t exactly facilitated my preparations for the New Year as regards the new issue of Strangehaven and the like.

Almost inevitably, both my girlfriend and I came down with head colds, probably picked up over the Christmas break at one of the festive get-togethers with friends and family. My guess is at Liam and Donna’s New Year eve party where there were certainly a number of sniffles around and lots of kissing on the lips.

Anyway, once the aforementioned girlfriend had recovered and gone back to work, I was suffering from the peak of this particular virus. Then, Billy Whiz the whippet started throwing up and refusing food. Billy has always been sympathetic to the ‘eat now, vomit later’ canine philosophy and was especially partial to aerial ejections from Monty macaw’s food bowl. This includes whole (shelled) Brazil nuts, which are both poisonous and indigestible to dogs. So, after several days of attempting to remove bile stains from the carpet, we decided that a visit to the local veterinarian was in order.

After an inconclusive x-ray and negative tests for pancreatitis and other conditions, exploratory surgery was deemed necessary. The culprit for Billy’s poorly state was revealed under the knife; a whole pecan nut in its shell causing a serious blockage in Billy’s small intestine.

Various theories exist which may explain the presence of this rather unusual object in Billy’s belly, as pecans are not indigenous to these isles, but if he did indeed swallow it whole from the vicinity of Monty’s stand, it was many man moons ago.

Billy is currently recovering slowly (and still dripping blood over soft furnishings) at home under the nursing care of a former cartoonist. It should also be noted that the cost of treatment currently stands at £712.00 ($1388.00) not including carpet and upholstery cleaning.

All this while we were still recovering from the shock of discovering that our 11 year-old military macaw Monty is not actually a male bird as was previous assumed, but is in fact a female. Suspicions were aroused by occasional bouts of nest-building and a rather familiar cycle of mood swings, but after calling the bird “he” for many years, it was difficult to change to “she” without definitive sexing. And unlike other bird species, male military macaws are visibly indistinguishable from their sexual counterparts without DNA testing.

Unless that is, they start laying eggs. Which is what Monty started doing just before Christmas. Just one at first, then after a few day’s rest, a second smooth white egg appeared in the bottom of little miss Monty’s cage. No wonder he… er, I mean she had been making some rather odd squawking noises in the days leading up to the unexpected arrivals.

Note: As regards to the title of this piece, we didn’t hard boil Monty’s eggs (nor even soft boil them), it’s reference to my all-time favourite Laurel & Hardy quote, from County Hospital.