Hello everybody-- We are doing an incredible job right now on just about every front. **We have expanded our bird care class offerings and now have regular classes scheduled in the South Bay, East Bay, and San Francisco. We're moving toward a standard schedule in the Sacramento Area as well. We are also hoping to expand our curriculum to include more advanced topics----we're working on setting up a Large Bird Handling class right now. **We have EXCELLENT shelter teams that do welfare checks on birds in almost every shelter from Watsonville to Sacramento and quickly respond to situations where birds need transportation to vets. **Our Tech Team is just amazing and has succeeded in shifting 95% of the website to formats that allow instant updates by anyone authorized. Matt can tell you MUCH more about the technical advances, so I'll leave that to him. :-) **Thanks to Cathy Hesse, who answers mail@mickaboo and the dedication of the Voicemail Team, the days of missed contacts and unreturned phone calls are far behind us. **We have shortened the adoption process in almost every case because all of you have stepped up in a *major* way to do phone screens and home visits. I don't want to make this list so long it's unreadable (!), so I'll stop there. BUT, you knew there was going to be a "but" didn't you??!! We are in trouble in two areas: 1) We don't have enough people willing to store and move cages. So mundane! But the lack of a cage can mean a bird stays in a shelter or can't be surrendered. If you are able to help in this area, you don't have to commit huge amounts of time. If 30 people agreed to do one cage transport per month, we're there! If one or two people in each part of the Bay Area could store one or two cages, getting them where they need to be would be much, much easier. Right now we often have to move cages from the South Bay to the North Bay or Sacramento. 2) We need more income streams---our vet bills have been astronomical lately. Cathy Hesse is doing an absolutely fabulous job as the Fundraising Coordinator, but this isn't a one-person job. Now, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but PLEASE don't respond to this issue by saying "I have a great idea that Mickaboo can do." YOU are Mickaboo. If you have a great idea and can follow through on it yourself, that's what we need. So there it is! It would be so unfortunate if our amazing record in 2007 was negatively impacted by something as simple as moving cages. :-( And we are now a very large group of fabulous, committed bird lovers--a little creativity and follow through by everybody could increase our income by a lot and keep us on this wonderful run of success. Thanks for listening! --Nancy -- Nancy Powell Operations Manager Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue www.mickaboo.org