Hi folks, 

This is advance notice that the January 26 "Pet Tales" (Eileen Mitchell's column in the Wednesday SF Chronicle and SFGate) will be on the rescue and rehabilitation of Chulo, our first cockatiel. Chulo was adopted directly from SFACC in 2005, before we'd heard of Mickaboo. However, we adopted Bucky (aka Buchanon) from Mickaboo as a friend for him the following year. And since that's an important part of Chulo's story, Mickaboo will be mentioned, and of course there will be a link to our Web site. Eileen also promises to include a callout box for information about our organization. 

Like other SFGate columns, Pet Tales encourages reader feedback. Comments can be up to 2,500 characters (which is fairly decent) and can be on anything even tangentially related to the story. So if there are points we want to make about Mickaboo, the crisis of unwanted cockatiels, bird care, rescue and rehabilitation, our need for support (especially for adopters and foster parents), or any other facts or ideas we want to get out to the public, this will offer a good opportunity to address a self-selected and potentially receptive audience. 

Also, as Elizabeth, Pam, and others have pointed out, Eileen is a fan of ours and is very interested in getting more stories about birds.  She herself wrote a column last July on her late cockatiel, Danny-Boy, whom she loved dearly and misses. She ran another on Elizabeth and MickaCoo awhile back, and there may have been one or two more, but the overwhelming majority of columns are on dogs or cats (no surprise). So if anyone has an interesting tale to share, I'm sure she would be delighted to get it. Her target length for stories is about 575 words. I found her friendly, supportive, and very easy to work with. 

Jonathan