Author - Jui Purohit.

  We never had any pets in our house after that stern announcement. But I forgot to mention that we have a farmhouse. The farmhouse is uphill and a stray dog had lost it's way, it happened to come there, few years ago. And now it was already, a pet. This was when my younger son was just shy of 3. We were all celebrating New Year's eve there, along with our friends and family. So this Tommy(the pet dog, named by caretaker of farmhouse), was strolling around. I had already warned to tie him up as there were kids and strangers around him. "But dogs are lovable, they don't bite", such misconceptions of so-called dog lovers, aided Tommy on being legs free (if I can say so). We were having dinner in the patio. After the dinner was over, I collected the plates to take them inside. And I heard a loud scream. I rushed outside, only to see the worst. My younger son's forehead was profusely bleeding. I grabbed him and under the basin tap, cleaned his wound. It was a deep...

  Budgerigars were gone, so were the parrots, another round of budgerigars happened not so far later. They were given away too, ofcourse by me. Somehow, since childhood, I never had liked pets as such. No animosity, but the rancour was evident, apreś. I never enjoyed, how my friends used to go on telling stories about their pets, mostly dogs or cats. "Pepsi sleeps with me, Raju tags along wherever I go, Milee barks non-stop(is it even a thing to boast about?), Marshall eats only home-cooked meals, Boxer licks me when he's happy(Eewww!)".....so on and so forth... Nothing of this really excited me or made me even once think about having a pet. Now, it was the time for some fish at my place. We had already had a fish tank, prior to budgerigars, but when we had floods in here, the tank had spilled and fish had already washed away. This tank was already there when I got married, so technically for me budgerigars were first pets brought in, after my marriage. In the meanwhile, ...

  Even if I had succeeded in my pet hostility mission, my hubby(who is passionate about having pets, alike my kids), this time, got a pair of parrots for kids.  Once again, our house was filled with bywords, YAY! Hurray! etc etc.....But akin to previous case, I wasn't a part of their celebration.  Again, parrots are intelligent birds. They too have the ability to imitate human speech. So 'Mein Kampf', with teaching them to speak, was on going for my kids. I hadn't taken so much pain in teaching my kids to speak. And more so, my younger son himself wasn't able to speak many English words still, yet, he was trying to teach the parrots how to speak! Guavas, chillies, tiny apples, pulses, now, had to take the inventory check on these, more than often. Swing was made from scratch for them, in their lavish cage. Parrots have strong zygodacty feet(2 toes facing forward and 2 back) with sharp, elongated claws, which they use for swinging. They enjoyed the oscillations so mu...

  The first pets that made their way to our home were the budgerigars or lovebirds as we know them. Blue, yellow, green, white, the shades and hues were amazing. Max, Piggy, Piggyot, Margo were the few names that I can recall, given to them by my kids. They are beautiful birds, blessed by nature with colourful appearances. They are popular pets around the world due to their small size and ability to mimic human speech. The aviculture of these is on a large scale. They are social animals and require stimulation in the shape of toys and interaction with humans or with other budgerigars, hence are tamed along with few others.  Well, well, I know alot of encyclopedia here....but all this research work was done by my elder son who was not even 10. He loves animals and birds and is crazy about pets. But I wasn't keen on it, at all. Because I knew that in the spur of moment, my kids will agree on all the conditions to have a pet. But later, all the care and work to be done will event...