What a month! Sometimes nothing happens and then all of a sudden we get a flood of events. November was the most eventful month so far this year. Some of the news are good some are bad. First the good.

Kumiko won a second prize in the miniature division of the Houston International Quilt Show.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) To those not familiar with the sub-culture of quilting, this is quite an achievement. First of all, not everybody can participate. It is a juried show, which means that participation is only by invitation based on a preview of the completed work. To get selected with your first submission is considered quite a coup. And to win a prize with that first submission is something most people do not even dream about.

She found out about it a few weeks before the show when the organizers called her to invite her to the award ceremony.She knew she was getting a prize but they would not tell her which. The ceremony took place on the evening before the exhibition official opening. It was a big event, organized along the lines of Academy awards and since nobody knew which prize they were getting, it was full of suspense until the end.The prize comes with a check for a nice round sum - this is not amateur league anymore.

At the ceremony Kumiko met several women from the Bow River quilting group in Calgary to which she used to belong. One gets a feeling that quilters are a big global secret organization. Well, and as if this were not enough: at essentially the same time, the same quilt was chosen to form part of a cover of a quilting magazine.

However, not all news were good. On Sunday, three weeks ago I went to pick up Kumiko at the airport. We pulled in at home and brought in the first suitcase. QP was sitting on the paper boxes underneath the cage. I went out for the remaining luggage and Kumiko took QP into the piano room. As I was coming in, QP took off but instead of landing on his cage as he always does he turned to the right and flew right by me and out through the open door. We ran out and I was half expecting him to be sitting on the lawn somewhere. But in spite of the fact that until now he flew only little, at most twice around the room, he flew up so high we could not see him. We could only hear him high up in the pine trees. And then he took off again and we could see a little speck flying high above the trees turning to the right and heading west to an undeveloped part of the subdivision still covered by the original forest. Somehow Monica was able to follow him and came back telling us that she knows which tree he is on.

We sprayed on lots of mosquito repellent and followed her. Well, we could not really see QP but we could hear his characteristic voice. It was impossible to tell for certain which tree he was on and even if we knew, there was no way of climbing up the tall smooth pine trunks totally devoid of supporting branches. Monica brought in a ladder, a tiny affair about 2 m high which was too short to make any difference. But somehow it must have spooked QP and he started flying in a big circle above the trees whistling along before finally landing in another crown. We tried to get him to come down by whistling to him, he would answer but would not come back. We could not think of anything else to do and sadly returned home.

QP has been with us for a very long time. Monica chose him in a store in north Dallas more than 7 years ago, when she was still in elementary school. We had to wait more than a month before the woman who raised him would let us take him home because he was still being hand-fed baby food mix. It was only when he could eat millet on his own that he moved to our house. I never liked the idea of a bird living locked up in a cage and so we had an open door policy - the cage door was open during the day and we would close it only at night when the cage was covered anyway to make it dark inside.

Things really changed after a veterinarian told us that seed-only diet was not the best we could do and that in fact QP should eat anything we ate if he felt like it. He liked spaghetti, buckwheat noodles and loved rice. He could smell when the rice was about ready and would make sure we did not forget about him. When I was making my lunch with cottage cheese and raisins he would fly in to get his share.

QP moved with us from our first house in Dallas to the house on Dentport and then made the big move to Houston. Last year he drove with us to New Orleans and spent a couple of days hiding in a hotel room. Lately he often did not sleep in his cage but in Monica's bed. He would also take shower with her and loved to whistle in the shower!

It is hard to tell how many tunes QP could have learned if we have had more patience teaching him. Even so he did a very good rendition of Bridge over the River Kwai, When all the Saints and the first few lines from Moldau by Smetana. But this was enough to give him a base to improvise from, liberally sprinkled with bird and squirrel sounds he learned by listening to the noise coming in from the outside.

QP even helped around the house. He volunteered as a Christmas tree decoration. Sometimes he decided to help Kumiko with her african violets and very quickly chopped off just about all the leaves. After that he spent some time locked up in his cage. He decided that the wall paper in Monica's bathroom was not up to snuff and started to peel it off. With QP gone the job is not finished yet. His interests were broad ranging, he would try to clip my beard if I would not shave for a few days and he regularly checked Monica's teeth for cavities.

Kumiko and Monica went back the next day and left QP's cage in a clearing close to where we saw him last. Monica also made a flyer and distributed it through the neighborhood. Neither strategy worked. One man told her that he did see not one but two cockateels and later we had an independent report of a cockateel sighting about a week before QP flew away.

QP's sudden departure was a big shock for all of us. Through all the years he never showed the least inclination to take off. While he would fly it was always a last resort, he preferred to walk and climb. I sometimes worried about forgetting that QP is on my shoulder and walking outside. But I also thought that if something like that should happen he would probably just stay sitting on my shoulder.

Most likely when he saw the open door he just took it for another room. But once he was outside he must have been totally overwhelmed. So much space. And he could fly so far. After many year of living together we could tell when he was happy, frightened or angry. The sounds he was making while flying outside clearly showed that he was enjoying the new experience. The world must have looked totally different all of a sudden. He always saw us at eye level and I doubt he could recognize us looking 20 meters down from the top of a pine tree.

Unfortunately the weather was miserable for the next few days. Almost constant rain, sometimes quite heavy and unseasonably cold temperatures. It was a bad time to strike out on his own. We can only hope that he had enough time to find a hollow tree to hide in. While he was living in our house we noticed that he was always on a lookout for dark holes and would get into paper bags, boxes, closets and cupboards. We hope he is doing fine and still miss him very much.

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