Lucy and Ethel...Ever have a friendship like they did?  

'I Love Lucy' is on right now. I was just wondering if you have, or ever had a friendship like those two had?

I haven't. I had some real close childhood friends but we moved so that took care of that. I have a cousin I'm pretty close too, but again, we live so far apart.

My sister and her daughter use to remind me of Lucy and Ethel all the time. My sister always loved animals, all animals. We got pretty heavy into parrots and birds one time. It becomes like an addiction.

This fellow we knew was selling out so my sister (who simply cannot resist a finch, even if does cost $100,00 for a pair) worked something out with the fellow and then has to figure out how she's going to smuggle all these extra feathered critters into her already bird pack house.

Her plan, she tells my niece, is that they will arrange the new birds in and amongst the other bird cages and behind plants and so on. If everything goes according to plan, Charlie (my brother-in-law) wont even notice, and by the time he does, she can in all honesty say 'Oh those Charlie? we've had those birds'.

And then there is my niece trying to be the voice of reason like Ethel always was, 'Mama, I don't know, dad already told you no more birds'.

Just like Lucy, she is driven and she simply has to have them. And like Lucy and Ethel it all worked out okay, at some point she fessed-up, Charlie chuckled and that was the end of it.