Pickles The Parrot: A Humorous Look At Life With An African Grey (7 page)

Our lovely home became one big birdcage,
still void of paintings or knick knacks that we felt needed
protection from Pickles. We may as well have replaced the couches
with stick furniture and the carpets with cement flooring and put
in a drain so that we could hose the house down to clean all the
spattered poop and food as needed.

It took a couple of weeks of working with
PBAS but various plans were implemented, success was achieved and
it has stuck with him for the most part. There is still the very,
very odd time that Pickles, if left alone too long, will climb down
and go searching for us. Sometimes he might be startled into flying
down but he has become uncomfortable on the floor so he will
quickly scramble back up his cage.

Pickles has always been afforded a lot of
freedom, meaning a lot of time out of his cage. About the only time
he was required to be caged was at bedtime or if we had to go out.
He started refusing to go in the cage when we needed to go out and
as I said earlier, we don’t like to force him into anything. To
make matters worse, he was now deciding which days he wanted to go
to work with us. Some days, he preferred to stay home and refused
to get in his travel cage to go with us. The first couple of times
this happened, he wouldn’t go in his living room cage so we had to
trick him by placing his favorite foods inside and locking the cage
door after he climbed in. He caught on fast and stopped going in
after the food.

I was desperate one day. Neil was out of town
and I had to open the shop. Pickles didn’t want to go to work, and
didn’t want to go in his cage. After trying unsuccessfully to bribe
him, I finally had to leave. I came home part way through the day
to check on him, it’s only a 2-minute drive, and everything seemed
fine but he still wouldn’t get in his cage. When I got home that
night, he was whistling happily on his cage top and there were no
signs of destruction or tell tale signs of poop on floors or
furniture. Since Pickles, by this time, was not all that
destructive and preferred staying aloft, we figured we’d let him
have his way until we came up with a better plan.

Still though, there were days he was good
about going in the cage and I had no problem locking him in so one
day I had some shopping to do and was gone for about 45 minutes.
Upon my return, I thought it curious that I wasn't greeted with
Pickles' usual "Mama's home! Hello baby!" so I walked into the
living room to investigate.

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach as I
realized my very, very, VERY worst fear had become a reality. I
stood, dumbfounded, gaping at an empty cage. Somebody broke in the
house and stole him.

Then I noticed the cage door. hmmm. What
kinda self-respecting thief would steal a parrot and take the time
to lock the cage door in the open position? Damn, I'd gone out and
forgot to put Pickles in his cage. My relief quickly turned to
worry though because he wasn't anywhere in sight.

I began my search, looking for signs of a
poop trail. I'm calling for him and his silence conjures up images
of an electrified bird lying in a smoking heap behind the couch
(having chewed through an electric cord). My grasping mind tells me
"it's okay, you know how he clams up in impish delight while
enjoying an impromptu game of hide-and-seek" but I'm uneasy
non-the-less.

As I'm on my hands and knees, peering under a
couch, I hear a VERY distinctive nose laugh. You know the
sound—when someone is laughing through their nose with their mouth
closed. I look up from my crouched position, into the kitchen about
6 feet away and there, smack dab in the middle of the dictionary
stand, roosts a smartass little Grey.

"Pickles!" I exclaim.

"What's up?" he queries with a twinkle in his
eye.

"I've been looking all over for you!" I
reply.

"Huh?" he asks.

"You heard me.” I said, which triggers more
nose laughing and some gleeful head bobbing.

As I walked toward him he commanded, "Step
up" as his little footsie was waving in the air in anticipation of
my hand and a free ride home—or so I thought.

The moment he stepped up on my hand, he flung
himself upside down exclaiming "Upside down bird!" I told him to
get back up as I righted him with my other hand. After momentarily
obliging, he promptly fell over once again. He thought this a
delightful little game and continued to fall over like some
stinkin' drunk.

So there I am, walking around with an upside
down bird on my hand, telling him to get back up and he's piping
"get back up!" right back at me. I carry this lippy, drunken bird
to the cage and try to set him down gently on his back but he just
lies there clinging to my finger. I try to pry his talons off but
they just dig in deeper.

I give up, sit on the couch and place him on
his back in my lap, between my legs. He lies there, trying to
outlast me. Eventually he says "ticko, ticko, ticko" so I tickle
his belly. He gets so excited that he releases his hold but is now
stuck on his back like a turtle, waving his feet frantically in the
air. I don't help the little stinker. Instead, I sit there and nose
laugh.

All this time I had thought Pickles was
getting his vocabulary from me. As it turned out, he'd been reading
the dictionary behind my back.

I think the most serious issue was about 2
years after we got him, when Pickles started to bite Neil. He was
biting hard and drawing blood any time Neil tried to get him to
step up. There were 2 reasons we believe were the cause. I had come
out from behind the counter at the shop one day to help someone
choose some flies and another customer ducked behind the counter
and got Pickles to step up. He moved fast for a large, imposing
looking man and I didn’t have time to react. By the time I got to
him, Pickles was running up his arm and the man was grabbing his
beak and teasingly shaking Pickles head. Pickles didn’t like this
and he bit, but this guy just thought it was funny and kept doing
it. I got Pickles off the guy’s arm as soon as I got there but the
harm had been done.

From that moment, Pickles would talk to men
but he didn’t like being too close and would not step up for them,
and this included Neil. Neil became quite fearful of Pickles and of
course, Pickles picked up on this. He would offer Neil his neck for
scratches but when Neil went to oblige, Pickles would whip his head
around and bite—hard.

Around the same time, Neil had taken a
6-month job out of town, which meant he was only home for the odd
weekend. During this time, Pickles bonded tight with me and Neil
had become almost a stranger to him. It was frustrating for me when
Neil came home to visit because, since he couldn’t get close to
Pickles there was little interaction between the two of them.
Pickles had grown use to our routine of going for walks around the
house or playing on the couch. He can be quite the card while
playing and I would try to get Neil to watch but Neil was beginning
to resent the time I spent with Pickles when he and I had so little
time together these days. I was afraid their relationship was
doomed for life, which wasn’t fair for all involved.

I hatched a plan. Once he finished the
out-of-town job, I made Neil Pickles’ primary caregiver. Neil did
all the feeding and all the cage cleaning. Pickles’ favourite
treats are pine nuts so Neil would drop them into Pickles’ bowl or
next to him throughout the day. Neil didn’t get too close the first
few days but made a point of standing next to Pickles just to chat.
I taught Neil how to read Pickles body language so he could
anticipate a bite and before long he was able to pick his moments
and get Pickles to step up. All interaction with Pickles was to be
fun, nothing negative and I handled any unpleasant situations that
arose. Pickles soon learned that all interaction with Neil was fun
and games and they bonded quickly. A few months later, Neil wrote
an article for Good Bird Magazine entitled The Myth of One Person
Birds. He wrote how to change it and how it’s selfish not to. If
something happens to a parrot’s primary caregiver what becomes of
that parrot? What kind of life will he have if he’s incapable of
bonding to anybody else?

A short time down the road, Neil had to go
out of town again for 2 months and this time Pickles was miserable.
If Pickles is miserable, I’m miserable. Not just because I feel
sorry for him but also because the little snot is convinced it’s
entirely my fault so he rags on me all day. If parrots had their
own swear words, his spiteful squawks would surely be unspeakable
and when he does use his words, it’s an insistent “Dadddeeeeeeeee.
Daddy be right back!! Dadddeeeeeee. Daddy’s home???
Dadddeeeeeee….”. I’d rather pluck nose hairs than listen to
that.

Two nights after Neil's departure, Pickles is
especially cranky. After an intense bout of the above behavior and
mad at me for ignoring him, he stomped around the top of his cage
attacking every single toy that had the nerve to cross his path
then promptly ran down the outside cage bars and plopped his head
into the outside pellet bowl. There he hung, clinging to the bars
upside down with his head hidden like an ostrich in the dirt. He
remained like that for quite some time completely motionless. I
watched. He hung.

After awhile I finally asked if he was okay.
An echoed grumbling was my only reply. A couple of minutes later, I
asked again but his only response was a very quiet, mournful
"Daddeeee" punctuated with a sigh.

"You gonna hang upside down with your head in
a bowl for 2 months Pickles?" I asked.

"Stuck" he said.

"You're not stuck, your just sulking" I
accused.

"STUCK" he insisted.

"Liar" I said.

A solitary eye rose barely above the brim
just long enough to glare at me, then back to the bowl.

Fine, let's see how long he can pout upside
down. I wait.

We both sit in silence. Blessed silence.
Something I hadn't experienced for a couple of days.

Pickles couldn't stand it after awhile and
couldn't resist raising his head in slow motion until one eyeball
appeared just long enough to confirm he still had my attention.
Then back in the bowl.

He soon tired of this position so, with his
head still inside, one foot reached for the side of the bowl, but
he slipped. With a flap and a squawk, he landed in the bowl with
nothing but his little twinker sticking out.

A short struggle ensued and, without ever
retracting his head, he managed a foothold on the edge of the bowl.
There he perched, headless. And embarrassed. He blames the pellets
and punishes them all by smashing them with his beak and sending
them flying, head still in bowl.

He settles down but now it's a matter of
pride. He's tired of his head in a bowl but how do you remove a
head without losing face? He opts for a clever change of subject.
Switching to his sweet voice, he politely asks, "Wanna sing a
song?"

I'm tempted to make him sweat it out a little
longer but I cave and sing him his favorite song. Up pops the
weasel with a "Woo Hoo! Whatta good song!!" Pickles chimes in and
we pretend he didn't just spend the last few minutes making a fool
of himself.

He settled down after that but a couple of
weeks later, I was sitting on the couch with Pickles on the back of
the couch next to me. I noticed him looking with interest outside
so I turned and saw the neighbour's headlights as he was turning
into his driveway. I commented, "Davie's home" and Pickles went
ballistic! He started flapping, crouching, wing splaying and
running back and forth the length of the window. In his excitement,
he somehow became airborne and landed on the base of his play
stand. From there, he scampered up the branches, fast as a monkey
hollering “Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home! Woo hoo! Hello baby! Hello
bayyyybeeee!”

Oh man, I felt sooo bad. He thought I said
Daddy and even though he knows the difference in driveways I guess
he got confused.

It took me awhile to calm him but after
awhile he sat there, all fluffed up, mournfully informing me "Daddy
go bye-bye. Be gone long."

Eventually Neil finished the job and returned
home. The next day, he went to work at the shop, giving me the day
off. Pickles wasn’t happy.

“Daddy go bye-bye.” he said glumly, “Be right
back” he added.

I informed him “No, Daddy be gone long
time.”

Pickles whined, “Gone long time??”

“Yes” I answered.

Pickles firmly announced “He SAID he’d be
right back!”

“He did not.” I argued.

“He said he’d sing a song!” Pickles said.

“Stop lying Pickles, Daddy went to work.” I
insisted.

“What a load of beans” he spat.

I mentioned Pickles’ little screech in the
first chapter. Over time, that little screech may as well have been
a drill through the head. I think I might have preferred it. He did
it whenever he wasn’t happy and usually, if Pickles wasn’t happy,
it was because he wasn’t getting enough attention. At first, when
he did this, we would tend to him and fix whatever was wrong. Bad
mistake. Pickles learned that screeches were rewarded with
attention so he used it incessantly. The more he used it, the more
we tried to please him. We don’t yell at Pickles, well that’s not
exactly true. We’ve yelled pretty loud, and let out some pretty
good swear words but that’s only while being on the bad end of a
beak. But when he’d start in, we’d start in with the firm
reprimands. Well! Pickles thought this grand! Any attention, ANY,
was better than NONE!

But when you really take the time to think
about these things, it’s not hard to outwit a bird while allowing
him to think he has the upper hand. It was hard, but from now on,
the moment Pickles screeched, we would stand up and walk out of the
room. He didn’t like that. Not one bit. So, he’d scream bloody
murder for our return. We would wait for the first moment of
silence and then immediately return to the room and sit down. We
never looked at him or talked to him on the way in or the way out.
At first, he would start the screeching within the first minute or
2 so up we got and left the room again. It’s hard to do this and
hard to be consistent because it only takes giving in once for him
to get his reward and revert back to his poor behaviour. That means
starting all over. It’s never convenient when you’re absorbed in a
TV show or you’re eating dinner but it had to be done. He’s a quick
study once you come up with a plan. He soon learned that he didn’t
just have to be quiet, that a nice chirp or word could initiate our
return.