Sketching Parakeets at Petco

After we finished sketching the laundromat, we moved on to Petco. I can’t wait for longer days so we can do our Tuesday night sketchcrawls outdoors again. But it was fun drawing the parakeets. They were holding pretty still, puffing up and preparing for beds. I worried about them, hoping they have happy lives.

This little guy was kind of cute in a spooky, red-eyed sort of way, but even on sale I wasn’t tempted. When my sons were young,  I bought an adorable pair of long-haired calico guinea pigs and we had such fun playing with them…for about two weeks. And then there was the years of caring for them….

He looked way too much like the kind of rodents you do NOT want to see in your house. I’ve seen pet rats that had some charm, but this guy just looked way too big and ratty. My sister had a rat that I babysat when she went on a trip. The rat was in a cage beside my son’s bed and it pulled the wool blanket that was my Grandma’s from the bed into the cage, bit by bit, and chewed off the corners for nesting material.

Then a couple of years ago, when Alison of art blog Scribbles Adagio was creating a multi-media work that included scraps of old blankets, I sent a 12″ square of the blanket to her in Australia. She sent me back one of the finished pieces that now hangs over my bed, a keepsake partly composed of my Grandmother’s blanket.

And I still use that old blanket to keep warm and cozy when I watch TV, even though it’s full of holes, missing corners and a 12″ square.