Love after 15 years requires a ring! Doesn't it?

Love and rings generally equal marriage; but after 15 years with this guy it would just be disgusting!  He even has love in his name-think back to all the Harlequin romance novels you read, only to hide them under the bed or better yet tossed in the trash.  In the novels his name is some weird unused name like,  Drake, or Sebastian, or Sir Galahad the Gross.  Anything to get you to not run into a guy at work with the same name in the book.  I digress--my guy's name is Bonnie.  Yep, you heard that one right Bonnie!  His first true love was Clyde but after ten years her image and cruelty has faded and I am the one with whom he is enamored.

Okay, truth is he bites me; not little love bites either; but then again it's part of his nature.  Bonnie is my 25 year old love bird. The love there is real,  its always been there I just kind of forgot about how endearing and tenacious he can be when he wants to be.  Now if you don't own a bird you probably want get this-- but think of your dog who has gotten white around the eyes, and has a little problem standing up on cold days. Remember yet?

Birds have just as much personality, so it makes it just as hard to decide whether he has lived long enough, and whether it's cruel to keep him alive.  I can honestly say now that the only reason he is still around is because of me...and a ring.

I thought my little guy was a goner.  I even brought my teenager to drive me back if I became too hysterical to find my keys. (I did mention Bonnie had a mate)  I put him in a box with towels to cushion him and air holes and drove the 45 minutes to the avian specialist.

 After calming me down and telling me he needed antibiotics 6x a day(no problem I thought) and with a clear plastic ring around his neck he would be fine.  Bonnie didn't think so at first, and neither did I. When she brought him out with his new collar, I cried.  Acting as all birds do,  when he saw me watching he threw himself around the box and then would stay still until I left.
 Months past, he learned to swing upside down again, get out of his cage and overall just got better.  We  started to have fun together again (i.e. bite me, shred paper and chew on anything).

The down side is that he will wear the collar for the rest of his life.  Every now and then we take it off for a couple of days; but inevitably it has to go on to keep his wing safe.   So the collar stays and what may seem brutal to most  gave me back my bird.

I call it my ring of love.