For many people keeping and breeding birds begins as a hobby or a business and then becomes more of an obsession, so that they come to believe that they cannot be happy if they do not hear the chirping of birds every day. Some keep birds on the roofs of their houses or even in their homes sharing the space with their family. Others keep the birds far away and travel daily to give them water and feed them. Many people find that keeping exotic birds involves them in making sacrifices even to the extent of breaking an engagement to be married because the woman does not like the man's infatuation with these exotic feathered creatures. Ahmed Sa'eed Al-Muwallad gave up his hobby of breeding birds and instead began auctioning them in the bird market as a result of a traffic accident that almost cost him his life. Two years ago he bought 140 pairs of breeding pigeons for SR2000 and loaded them in his pickup truck. He was so happy that he called all of his friends to tell them the good news, and he drove at a very high speed to get home quickly. “At a dangerous curve I lost control of my car and it overturned thrice,” he said. “I suffered compound fractures in my right leg and broke my ribs, and I was hospitalized for four months. Some of the pigeons died in the accident while others escaped and flew away. When I was released from the hospital, I found that because of the accident, I had formed a strong aversion to my hobby. I got rid of the rest of the pigeons I owned. Since that time, I have been working as an auctioneer in the bird market twice a week - on Thursdays and Fridays.” The story of Saleh Hatairish Al-Sibyani is not all that much different from Al-Muwallad's. Al-Sibyani used to keep many cages full of pigeons on the roof of his five-storey building but he ran out of space and started using the top part of the elevator shaft. On September 25, 2007 which was during Ramadan, Al-Sibyani was checking on his pigeons in the shaft when his foot slipped and he fell from the fifth to the ground floor. Luckily, there was no elevator and his family was using the bottom of the shaft for storing extra furnishing materials like mattresses, bed sheets and pillows, which cushioned his fall. However, he sustained a fractured arm and hip as well as bruises on his back. He shouted for help and groaned in pain, but none of his family could hear him. At Iftar time, he was not present at the breakfast table. At this point, his family became concerned and started looking for him everywhere until finally they climbed to the roof and heard his call for help from the bottom of the shaft. They took him to the hospital where he stayed until January 9. 2008. After that fall, Al-Sibyani swore that he would no longer keep pigeons. His brother got rid of them, but from time to time, Al-Sibyani still visits the bird market. Ibrahim Mu'awwadh Al-Shalabi said he had 600 pairs of breeding pigeons and that they multiplied to the extent that he had to rent a rest house to keep them. Several days a week he would take his family including his children to the rest house and they would spend a pleasant time feeding and watching the pigeons until midnight and then return home. However, rats began infesting the rest house killing the chicks and breaking the eggs. Al-Shalabi bought a carton of rat poison and started using it to get rid of the rats. Unfortunately, one day while he was busy with other matters, his four-year-old son got hold of the rat poison carton and swallowed a quantity of the pills thinking they were sweets. Al-Shalabi was shocked to hear his wife crying loudly and carrying their son's unconscious body. “I immediately took him to the hospital where the doctors said they were not sure my son would survive,” Al-Shalabi said. “I remained in a state of terror for four days, as my boy slipped into a coma. On the fourth day, he regained consciousness. I had sworn to Allah that if He saved my son, I would give up my hobby of 15 years with which I had become so involved that it even kept me from my prayers. In Ramadan, people were performing Taraweeh prayer while I was in another world with my pigeons. From that time, I gave up breeding pigeons, and my presence in the bird market is simply to accompany a relative.” However, Faisal Marghalani, 33, believes that breeding pigeons or other birds requires creating a balance in one's life. Marghalani, who has been breeding pigeons as a hobby for the past nine years, keeps the birds on the roof of his house. However, he does not allow this hobby to monopolize his time. He said a person must strike a balance in everything he does in life. Ayid Mulazim Al-Mas'oudi, who is a student, agrees with Marghalani that a person's hobby should not take all of his time so that it even affects his studies in school or college. However, he said keeping birds is better than wasting time uselessly without any hobby at all. Al-Mas'oudi buys and sells pigeons and goes to the bird market on Thursdays and Fridays. He said once he was disappointed when after buying a Shirazi pigeon for SR140, it escaped and simply flew away as he was taking it home. Amir Abdul Aziz Hamid Al-Qadhi is fond of keeping Australian birds, and his apartment is full of cages of exotic birds. At the beginning his wife did not like to have such birds in the house, but eventually the beauty of the birds enchanted her as well. Al-Qadhi said that besides the exotic Australian birds, he has many parrots. He has a parrot that has memorized fifty words in seven years. Among the words is the name Muhammad Noor – the Al-Ittihad Football Club player - who offered to pay SR4000 to purchase the parrot. However, Al-Qadhi declined as the bird is the only one of its kind that he owns. Meanwhile, Ghazi Atti Al-Barakati, 50, said he has been breeding Australian and other exotic birds since 1975. He said his family used to dislike the presence of cages of birds in their apartment, but with time they got used to them. Even the neighbors enjoy the chirping of his birds in the morning. Many of them open their windows to listen to the different sounds that the birds make. Ammar Muhammad Fatani broke his engagement to a girl in Makkah when she and her family put forth the condition that in order to finalize the marriage contract, he must get rid of the birds he was breeding. The reason they gave was that the girl was afraid of coming into close contact with such creatures. Fatani is now married to another woman and in fact gave up breeding birds after getting married.
