You'll Never Guess!

This is Stevie. I introduced him some time ago here.

Tuesday Hubby noticed that Stevie was acting strange. He was grumpier than usual, and living in the bottom of his cage. The thought that he might be sick and/or dieing crossed my mind. But I figured we should wait and see what happened before I got Hubby all worked up about it. Early Wednesday morning Hubby called me into the spare room (Stevie's room) and said, "What do you think that is?" See picture below.

"Theres only one thing it could be dear", I replied. So, it turns out our Stevie is a she. Our next questions were, "How is this possible?" and "What do we do with it?". We don't have a male bird. My guess was that they bred like fish. Female releases the egg and male comes along and fertilizes it. That seemed to make sense for our situation, except neither of us thought that was really how it happened. We decided to leave egg and mother alone until I could research this phenomenon at work. Yesterday I read all I could. Heres the best explanation I could find. We are allowing Stevie to sit on her egg, hoping that eventually she will get that it isn't going to hatch and become disinterested. Then we'll remove it, and no doubt have a proper burial such as we do for all of our creatures when they pass.

I think its been good for her in a way. She been very quiet and content, hovering over her "baby" and protecting it tooth and nail. We can barely come in the room without being hissed at, although my husband has been allowed some contact. We took a small tupperware bowl and an old rag and made a nest for it, hoping that it wouldn't crack before Stevie is ready to move on.

Also, I have to say that I have a new opinion of Stevie. She and I have never got along very well, but seeing her so maternal and careful with her egg has really softened my heart towards her.