Pet King

Chapter 243: Lovebirds

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Zhang Zian waited until Guo Dongyue finished, and he reminded Guo Dongyue, "You can talk about these things later. It’s not easy for us to make a trip here, so let’s get our things done first."

Guo Dongyue was thinking the same thing. He just reminded Lϋ Minyi out of a designer's professional ethics. After all, it would cause tragedy if such a large building collapsed in a typhoon. Although Phoenix House was not his design, he must point out the problems when he saw them because it was the right thing to do.

When he designed the glass garden house for the rich female, he specifically took his time to visit the local weather station to check the landing history, wind scale, movement route and impact scope of typhoons. If he remembered correctly, over a decade ago, a strong typhoon passed near the city, causing tremendous losses. In his design, he put the glass garden house against the sea behind the rich female’s villa, using the villa itself to block winds. In fact, many of these details might not be taken into account by many designers. Even if buildings were damaged by typhoons, people can attribute the reasons to natural disasters. But Guo Dongyue was a perfectionist.

"In this case, I shall do what a good host should do and lead the way for you." Lϋ Mingyi said enthusiastically, "I might not have the most breeds of birds nationwide, but there are at least hundreds of breeds, plus since I house them cage-free, even bird enthusiasts can’t find what they want easily."

"Director Lϋ, your time is too precious. I can accompany them on my own." Wei Kang winked at Lϋ Mingyi, indicating that he could guide them himself.

"Professor Wei, you are busy too... ..." Lϋ Mingyi hesitated.

Wei Kang pursed his lips and looked at Fina. He was trying to cotton up with Zhang Zian; perhaps Zhang Zian would agree to his request when they became more familiar.

Lϋ Mingyi nodded understandingly, "Then I’ll leave it to you, Professor Wei." Then he said to Zhang Zian and Guo Dongyue, "My guests, since Professor Wei intends to accompany you, I will step back from this tour. Professor Wei is my special consultant, if you need anything, feel free to tell him, he will arrange the assistance on my behalf."

Zhang Zian smiled, "Director Lϋ, thanks for your time. And don’t worry about us, we will be fine."

"See you later." Lϋ Mingyi bid farewell to them and walked quickly back to his office. He would make a few phone calls to inquire about the expertise of Guo Dongyue.

After Lϋ Mingyi had gone, Zhang Zian noticed that Wei Kang was trying to approach Fina. Zhang Zian stretched his arm to stop him, "Professor Wei, you said you were going to keep us company, don’t you remember?"

Wei Kang was reluctant to quit gazing at Fina, but he sighed, "Okay, okay. Let me take you to tour around. What kind of parrots do you want? Director Lϋ was telling the truth, we have too many types of parrots here. You will be dizzy if you search one by one."

Zhang Zian gestured that Guo Dongyue would answer the question.

Guo Dongyue answered uncertainly, "Probably lovebirds."

"Can you be more specific?" Wei Kang asked and introduced more information, "There are nine initial varieties of lovebirds, among which three varieties are commonly seen. And the three varieties are divided into two categories, masked lovebirds, and peach-faced lovebirds. There are over 30 sub-varieties of masked lovebirds, and peach-faced lovebirds are divided into 17 lines according to the colors of their feathers. So you must at least ascertain whether you want masked or peach-faced lovebirds, and the next steps will be simpler."

Guo Dongyue frowned, "What are masked lovebirds and what are peach-faced lovebirds?"

"It’s easy to distinguish—masked lovebirds have a circle of white feathers around the rims of their eyes, and those who don’t have white circles around their eyes are peach-faced lovebirds." Wei Kang pointed to a few parrots that flew past them, "See them? Those are peach-faced lovebirds, the opaline lovebirds."

Zhang Zian and Guo Dongyue looked along the direction pointed by Wei Kang, and they saw a few small parrots with green feathers, white heads and necks, and yellow beaks landed on the leaves arranged artificially, and tweeted non-stop.

"Ah, their whole heads are white, probably not suitable to illustrate the differences between masked and peach-faced lovebirds." Wei Kang said and looked around, "Look at the blue and gold macaw parrot. It would be easier for you to understand."

The parrot he referred to had a light blue color; its neck was white and its forehead was golden. Just like Wei Kang had said, it had no white feather circles around its eyes, so it was a peach-faced lovebird.

Guo Dongyue tried to remember what the lovebirds looked like in his memory. That pair of lovebirds didn’t have white circles, so they should be peach-faced lovebirds.

"Professor Wei, I'm looking for peach-faced lovebirds," he said.

Wei Kang nodded slowly, "I’d guess so. In our country, most families keep peach-faced lovebirds, while overseas families prefer masked lovebirds. I guess it’s because we share different aesthetic standards."

Zhang Zian followed Wei Kang and looked around. He could learn about a lot of things from this expert, and he was also intrigued by another thing.

"Professor Wei, you keep these parrots out of the cages. Don’t you worry that they might produce lots of hybrids?" He pointed to the flying parrots in all kinds of colors.

This spectacular and wonderful scene had made him wonder since he entered the gate, and he finally caught the opportunity to say his doubt. If adult cats or dogs were kept free-range, they would definitely mate randomly and give birth to a variety of hybrids. Free-ranging would be a problem for parrots too then, right?

Wei Kang seemed to have guessed that Zhang Zian would ask such a question, and he replied immediately, "I heard that your shop only has cats and dogs, and you probably don’t know much about parrots."

"Temporarily, only cats and dogs." Zhang Zian corrected him, pretending there would be more animals in the future.

Wei Kang was surprised by his answer. "I didn’t mean to derogate you. In fact, you and I specialize in different areas, and there’s nothing wrong with the fact that your specialty lies in cats and dogs. Back to what we were saying earlier, parrots are different from cats and dogs. Generally, when there are more parrots of the same variety in the environment, they will choose to mate with the ones who share the same variety—though there are a few exceptions. When there are little or no parrots of the same variety in the environment, they will choose to mate with parrots of other varieties.

"Oh, that explains so much."

That was quite a strange property, which was unlike that of cats or dogs. Having learned something new, Zhang Zian tried to sum it all up in a simple and easy way, "So, if I use cats as an example, it means that provided there are enough numbers of same types of cats, black cats tend to mate with black cats, and white cats tend to mate with white ones?"

Wei Kang was dumbfounded by his analogy. "Your example is vivid, and it makes sense. But birds are not cats. Birds are more… fastidious."

Hearing that Wei Kang was appraising birds while belittling cats, Fina stared at him disgruntledly.

Zhang Zian was just joking. But parrots seemed to be honor their principles when it came to mating behaviors.

"But I heard that, as their name implies, lovebirds are more difficult to make into couples than other parrots?" he asked.

"It is true." Wei Kang nodded, "So raising them cage-free can let them choose who they like, and they can mate freely."

Zhang Zian felt that compared with other animals, parrots’ attitudes towards relationships were more similar to those of humans.