Squawking

The other day I decided that I wanted to find a house-warming pressie for Iss. Something to say welcome to our new home. She's, and I am sure she won't mind me telling you, a fan of cockatiels and has three in RL. I had the thought that it might be a nice idea if they could somehow be presented in SL too. So my search began.

Have you ever thought what a mission it might be to find cockatiels in SL? Take it from me, it's not as easy as it sounds.

I started, fairly sensibly with a search for 'cockatiel'. It yielded minimal results although I did find some fairly decent ones at one place. The rest of the search results were either for avatars or personal profiles containing said word.

I knew there were many pet shops around, and had heard some were better than others but couldn't remember which were good and which were bad so I began the extensive task of pretty much visiting every single one in the SLuniverse. I liked the birds I'd found earlier but I wanted to be sure that they were the best available. Nothing less than the best for my roomie :)

Well, after finding mutliple parrots, and parakeets and cockatoos, I eventually decided that no-one else catered for the discerning cockatiel lover (other than the avatars, but that's not quite what I was after, and heading too far down that line would get quite disturbing quite rapidly). So I headed back to the first place to make my purchase.


Iss arrived home last night to find her surprise. And I think it's fair to say that she was happy with the gift. So mission accomplished there then :)

One more thing though - while I was searching like a nutter, I got the impression I was being watched. I don't know what it was that made me feel like that but I was sure there was something following me, just out of eyeshot. A presence. But whenever I turned round it was...aaaaaaaargh!