LADY & HOBBES

Some of you have heard about how our bird Hobbes ended up at our store, and said we should tell it to everyone. We thought maybe… but then when Hobbes met his Lady, we thought that was definitely a story worth telling. So here it is.

Hobbes came to us late November when we were just beginning to open the store (very softly). A nice woman found him weak and hungry outside her door but she couldn’t keep him. She was walking by our store with Hobbes inside a small box, on her way to the Humane Society, when Alli just happened to be outside the store on the sidewalk, cleaning our windows. She asked Alli if this was a pet store, and asked if the store would care for the bird. Alli was caught by surprise and off guard, and had said OK and taken the box before realizing – hey, wait a minute – what just happened here? Alli knows quite a bit about dogs, but she knew absolutely nothing about birds. But lucky for the little lovebird, one of our staff, Sayo, happened to be a bird expert (she rehabs wild birds), so he (we think it’s a he) was adopted by all of us, and became a very noisy boss at the store.

Since our store, Calvin & Susie, is named after two golden retrievers who were named after a couple of characters from the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, we decided to name the bird Hobbes.

On Christmas eve, we didn’t want Hobbes to be alone on Christmas day in an empty store, so we decided to take him home. Ordinarily, it would be Sayo, the bird rehabber, who takes him home as she did over Thanksgiving, but because the new big cage we got for him wouldn’t fit through her car door, Alli ended up taking Hobbes home for Christmas.

So on Christmas morning, Alli, even with her limited bird knowledge, thought it would be nice for Hobbes to be outside to get some fresh air during the day, so she set the cage on a table on her lanai that has a nice view over some treetops.

So Hobbes was out there chirping away, and soon Alli noticed that his chirping got really loud and frantic. So she looked outside, and lo and behold, there was this beautiful yellow bird on top of Hobbes’ cage chirping along with him. So Alli went outside to check it out, and the yellow bird flew away. After checking to see everything was ok with Hobbes, Alli went back inside the house and spied. And sure enough, the yellow bird came right back and she stayed with him the whole day, leaving only when people approached them and occasionally, we assume, to forage for food. When it started to get dark, the yellow bird flew away, and Hobbes cage got covered up and brought inside.

The next day, we decided that Hobbes should stay with Alli through the holidays since the store would be closed on New Year’s Day again. Hobbes cage was brought back out to the lanai, and the yellow bird almost immediately flew up and joined him again. This went on for a few days, and we decided that the yellow bird must be lonely out there, and decided to try and catch her.

We put a smaller cage next to Hobbes and put food and water in and left the door open so she can go in to eat and drink if she wanted to. Alli couldn’t spy all day, but when she got home from work, she could tell that someone had been in there eating the seeds. Finally, on New Year’s eve, Alli’s mom saw the yellow bird inside the small cage eating, and she quickly ran over there and blocked the door and the bird was caught! Then they lined up the two cage doors and opened them, and the yellow bird flew into Hobbes cage right away, and they immediately started what seriously looked like kissing. Unbelievable!

So that’s the story – Unembellished, as it really happened.

Hobbes and his Lady moved back into the store January 2, 2011, and as some of you may have witnessed yourselves, they are inseparable. Hobbes became even more bossy and protects his cage like it’s his castle. We referred to the yellow bird as Mrs Hobbes for lack of a better name, and now we call her Lady because she’s very sweet and ladylike, and because Hobbes grooms her all day and treats her like his queen.

But perhaps we should call her Chrissy, because she found us and Hobbes on Christmas Day…