Their colors are pretty as jewels. Fourth grader Allan A. is raising and caring for eight blue, green and mixed-hue parakeets. Two of them are tiny chicks who live in a nest box and will be old enough to share the big cage with the other birds in a week.
Allan goes to Butterfield Trail Elementary School in Fayetteville. He met a parakeet named Louie at Camp War Eagle and liked him so much that he wanted to have his own parakeet. His parents went to craigslist. Some people on the list had birds they couldn’t take care of anymore, so Allan got six birds from three different houses. They have names like Jewel, Winter and Shredder.
Allan thinks he’ll call the babies Kiko and Ramon. Their parents are Francisco and Francisca. Allan studied books and online sources before he got the birds, so he could learn how to take care of them and how to breed them.
Each parakeet has its own personality. “They’re always doing funny things,” Allan says. “They like to go cage-hopping. One time while we were eating dinner, Francisco tried to eat a meatball. Shredder likes to shred paper.”
Allan plans to breed more parakeets, but after there are 12, “I will give them away so someone else can be happy.”
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