Bird Brain

I just washed the poo off my fingers so I can write. (Bird poo, not mine.) I sit here, typing as quietly as I can as to not disturb the six sleeping babies inches from this keyboard. Despite my efforts, the quiet rat-tat-tapping of the keys draws 12 alert eyes, six at a time, from fuzzy, erect heads.

Um, scratch that. They all just fell asleep. Simultaneously.

That's just it: they're such - babies. 'Narcoleptic babies' may be redundant, because I think most babies sleep and wake at will, at times without direct obvious cause. I've declared it my favorite thing about these birds - that they run around with such an extreme sense of urgency and purpose - until they literally fall asleep. And I mean, fall over. Like they're dead.

It's like the rapture hit the brooder cage. One second, they're running about like mad, frantically searching for the thing they're - about - to - find - - - and the next instant their wings drop to floor and they melt sideways into the soft hay, or on top of the feed hopper, or beak-first into the water trough, or onto each other in one great soft mass. It's so terrifically funny, so inexplicable, but really - why not fall asleep whenever the urge strikes them? They're babies after all.

I really love them. All six of them, even the few I can't tell apart. One is smaller than the rest and has a subtle dark mark on her head tip. We call her 'Runt.' One is just huge, and seems to be developing about a day ahead of the rest, so we suspect she is exactly that - one day older. The other four are very similar, made all the more similar by the impression that the six of them share one tiny bird brain. We call it the 'hive mind,' because it's uncanny how they all want to do exactly the same thing at the same time. Sleep, drink, run around, peck something. It's like some announcement alerted them that water is on Sale Sale Sale! in aisle seven. And the sound that emanates from the cage is one big cloud of 'peep.' Somehow their chirps float around and defy acoustic law, and the effect is calming and dazzling.

Speaking of the pecking - it's constant and they're indiscriminate. They obey the following criteria:

1. Is there a value contrast (light to dark)?

2. Is it nearby?

That's all they care about. If it's a speck, or anything like a speck, or not even a speck but something that looks different than the stuff around it, it's peckable. That includes fingers, sleeves, pieces of hay, dried pieces of poo stuck on a fellow bird, parts of the brooder wire, their own feet - and on and on.

As for their temperament, I now understand two idioms in a way I never have before: 'bird brain,' and acting 'chicken.' I'll take the latter one first:

Being chicken. Chicken shit. Chicken-livered. You know; scared. It's funny, though; they're not timid. The opposite is true - they're intensely curious creatures. But they have hair-trigger orienting responses to absolutely everything. Rustling paper, a slight breeze, the squeak of a chair, a voice, even the clicking of keys on a keyboard. Everything is cause for instant alarm, but unless it's an immediate threat, they calm down as quickly as they get fired up. These birds can go from full panic to asleep in 5 seconds. I've seen it repeatedly.

That brings me to 'bird-brained.' Any creature that can freak out and fall asleep in the space of a few breaths must not think over-much about any one thing. They're not burdened with the concept of cause and effect or even sequential events. It's always now for them - like really now - all the time. Which is why it's so captivating to watch them for hours on end, which is exactly what Erik and I have been doing for the past week.

The brooder sits atop what used to be the dining room table, and has now turned into the bird and veggie nursery. Two chairs are drawn to the edge of the table, inches from the brooder, so that we can easily do all sorts of things while watching the girls. Tooth brushing, shoelace tying, coffee drinking - all happen in immediate proximity to the brooder cage. But mostly we just sit there together, Erik and I, like awestruck sports radio announcers, calling the play-by-play as we see it.

"Look- Runt's charging that other one! Did you see how high she just jumped?"

"Oh, that's definitely a poop squat. Good thing we change the litter to hay; it's a much better color now."

"Now that's one's falling asleep - can you believe it? She just fell over!"

The television in the other room talks to no one. Dirty dishes wait in the kitchen sink. Our cat wonders what happened to his once loving family.

Meanwhile, we just sit and watch, in wonder at it all.

Pesto presto

(Mom, this one's for you...but if you have tons of basil and like pesto, it's for you, too.)

What happens if you are stranded at home with this:

and this:


and maybe this?


Well, I was (except for the stranded part). And I made this:


I think it's the best pesto recipe ever, and it's so easy. There's a secret to the recipe, though -- anchovies. Believe it or no, and you'd never guess it by the taste of the finished pesto, but the anchovies lend a rich saltiness that works so well with the Parmesan.

I harvested the tops off my basil plants. As long as you cut just above a leaf node, the plant recovers just fine. In fact, I think mine have benefited from frequent cutting. They just keep producing and have not yet tried to go to seed. This is what the plants looked like after I chopped off the tops. Oh, and use a very sharp knife so you don't crush the stems.


And this is how much basil I used in this batch:

If you can't grow your own (this year, that is. No excuse for next!!), buy a bunch fresh. It should be cheap this time of year, especially at farmers markets, and very especially at the end of the day, when they're trying to unload it all.

Next, ask someone really nicely to peel you a boatload of garlic. I think I used about a cup of peeled cloves. I like to use this much garlic because it makes up a large portion of the body of the pesto. One of the reasons I do this is to cut some of the fatty richness (and guilt) of traditional pesto without compromising flavor. But using this much garlic fresh would remove the enamel from your teeth and burn the hairs from your friends' noses.

So the trick is to mellow it a tad by frying it in olive oil (which you need anyway for the pesto).

And here's where the secret weapon comes in: lots of anchovies packed in olive oil. Dump about 4 cans into a frying pan, (I say 4 because that's how much I used in this batch, but you can scale down) and add some extra olive oil (about 1/4 or 1/3 cup).

Then chop up the garlic just a little (not tiny pieces or they'll burn) and add it to the oil and anchovies.

Sautee over medium heat until the garlic is just golden.

I let it get a little more brown before I removed it from the heat.

The trick here is to just take the edge and zing off the fresh garlic, but not to caramelize it so it gets sweet.

Wash and pick the leaves of the basil, stick them in a blender and pour the hot oil/garlic/anchovy mix over it. This will wilt the leaves and make the whole mess fit better in your blender.


Blend it up a little. Then add a bunch of pine nuts (walnuts work too, but the flavor they lend is harsher. Still good, though).
And then about that much Parmesan cheese. The stuff in the green can works just fine, so don't waste your money. Good basil and garlic is more important.

Now you blend for real. You may need to add a tad more olive oil and perhaps a (as in, one) tablespoon of water to get things moving. Beware to not make your pesto a liquid, though. It should be very thick. And I don't recommend stirring the green guck with a wooden spoon while it's blending. The spoons tend to not recover well from brushes with whirling steel blades.

Blend it until it's super smooth, put in jars and freeze. The pesto is absolutely not shelf stable, so you have to either eat it, freeze it, or refrigerate it and use it soon. The reason you see so much (crappy) pesto in jars in the supermarket is because they've done something to the contents to make it stable, such as acidifying it. Check it out next time you're at the store. You'll probably see citric acid listed in the ingredients. This ruins the pesto and makes it taste sour and tangy in a bad way.

But nevermind all that bad news. The good news is that you have just made swoon-worthy pesto that would make the Godfather cry.

It's so easy being green.