Our next pet sit was in North Carolina, taking care of two precious babies: Pio (dog) and Lulu (bird). And what an adventure that turned out to be! It may have only been three days, but we'll remember it forever.
Day 1:
We arrive, excited to meet the babies. Pio is not thrilled to see us. He strongly and defiantly protected his house by running around peeing everywhere. Good boy.
Eventually he trusted us, then was inseparable from us. Evan took him for a walk while I cleaned up all the Protection Puddles™️ he left for us.
The bird Lulu was silent, clearly judging us from her cage and not yet sold on our nice-people-here-to-babysit-you act. We gave her many peanuts to smooth things over, which she accepted with a stink-eyed glare before, during, and after eating them.
Pio happily showed us his ball. Again. And again. And again. When we weren’t throwing it for him he would lay in the corner loudly squeaking it. At least it was easy to tell when he was up to something, if the squeaking stopped, get suspicious.
Whenever one of us got up to go to the bathroom, Pio provided armed protection to and from the bathroom. At first we thought this meant he didn’t trust us, but later we realized it meant he did trust us and never wanted to be parted from us (awwww!).
As a rule, we don’t sleep with pets we’re watching. Who’s to tell how they’ll be in the morning, or the middle of the night if they remember a stranger is by them? Pio disagreed with this rule. Loudly. Bless his heart, we heard his muffled protests through the door half the night.
Day 2:
Pio forgot us in the morning and we got to refresh his memory that we were in fact there to watch him and keep him safe. After “protecting” the house for another minute, he gave up and showered us with love. What a sweetie!
Lulu was more trusting today. She sang, as all happy birds do. The thing with African Grey Parrots is that they are smart and can learn human speech, so “singing” for her was different than for other birds. We were serenaded with calls of “Hello”, “Good morning”, “Good birdie”, and lots of microwave beep sounds. We would beep or click or “good birdie” back at her and she would happily respond with a new sound. A few times when we were all quiet she'd summon demons in the corner, but that only happened like 10 times. You stop and pay attention when someone is muttering deep mumbled almost-words into the void. A quick "Good birdie?" brought back the cheerful microwave beeps instead.
After a bit, we left to go see the Top Gun movie (loved it, highly recommend). Pio was mad he didn’t get to go, so he shredded some stuff for us by the time we got home. What a sweetie. He also got up on the couch with us. He seemed confident like this happened every night and we didn't get any rules from the owner, so I allowed it and he sat happily squeaking his ball.
Meanwhile Lulu trained Evan to “fly” her around. She didn’t like to fly on her own (or possibly couldn’t fly on her own if the owners clipped her wings), but traveling around on Evan was a great substitute! She’d hop on his arm and lean whatever direction she wanted him to go. He’d walk that way and she’d flap her wings like she was flying it herself. They saw many new places and interesting things, but by far the best was the legendary realm of Bathroom. That land came with a huge perch installed, a mirror with a friend, and some great rugs to run around on. The dream!
Day 3:
In which Pio scarred us but was fine. 🫣
We ate our lunch of bbq and very carefully kept it away from him. He got a bit too close and we told him “no”, and he didn’t seem trained but he’d listen for at least 60 seconds. He was a crafty bugger though and could tell when we were focused on something else like our phones or computers. In under two seconds he managed to grab a rib off the counter (what a tall boy!). We got it away from him but he must have snuck a bone out because he crunched down on something while we were throwing the rib away and devoured it in the split second it took us to get back to him. Smart dumb dog.
After a few vet calls, google searches, and chats with the owner, we gave him bread and settled in to keep a close eye on him. Cooked bones can splinter and hurt a dog (or cat). Beef, pork, or chicken, never give cooked bones to your pets. Pio would disagree. He regretted nothing. From his view he got tasty ribs AND bread AND all the attention he could ever want for the rest of our stay! Win, win, win. 10/10, would freak Evan and Kim out again.
As and added bonus, he got to see us all night. We checked on him every hour or two. Each time, he hopped up and was ready to play, a very happy dog despite the bleary-eyed humans saying, "You're okay, I don't want your ball, go back to sleep."
Day of checkout:
After no sleep, it was time to clean up and get the place ready for the owners. Pio made us nervous and we were ultra paranoid, just wanting the pets to be okay. I started the dishwasher and a glass drinking cup broke, which broke us. Not only had we endangered these people’s pet, we’d broken their stuff now too. Are we even competent adults?! We felt like John Mulaney driving. We started cleaning faster, feeling the curse that must be on our shoulders. Evan knocked over the table centerpiece and we stared at it silently for a second before both just saying “we need to get out of here!” It was fine and nothing was damaged, but it was time to go.
The pets could tell something was up and didn’t like it. Pio stuck even closer to us, trying to convince us to stay. Lulu beeped and clicked from the corner, flapping and asking desperately for us to stay and play more. We loved them and they loved us, but cursed is cursed so we left as close to our checkout time as possible.
They were sweeties and we enjoyed playing with them despite everything. We hope they have very good other sitters in the future ❤️
