I like birds. I spent a lot of time around birds as a teenager because my high school boyfriend's mom ran a private bird rehabilitation center out of her home; at any given time there could be twenty or more birds in the house.

In that house is where I fell in love with parrotlets. The teeniest full-grown bird I've ever seen would sit on my shoulder and preen my hair and coo into my ear. He was a poor little abused thing and had so much love to give.

In that same house is where I was viciously attacked by an African Something (I will look up the breed later) on my septum and millimeters away from my eye. This bird had it out for me and stalked my for months, waiting for an opportunity to attack me. It was traumatizing and I've been afraid with birds with beaks larger than my fingernails since then.

As a young adult I owned a pair of lovebirds who I struggled with constantly. I tried to spoil them with love and gifts, but it took a long time for them to warm up to me, and even then, they weren't very warm. I was a very inexperienced bird keeper, but I did what I could. When I moved into a place I couldn't take my birds, I rehomed them to someone who ran a house a lovebird-specific aviary.

We also had little finches when I was a kid, but didn't have much interaction with them.