Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (18 page)

Recently, Neil was out of town on a contract
job and the bread-making job fell to me. We have a bread maker and
Neil is usually in charge of that but while he was gone, I needed
bread so I decided to try my hand at it. I pulled the big bag of
flour down from the shelf and set it on the floor because there was
nowhere to place it on the counter. I had been busy writing while
Neil was gone and got a little – okay, a lot – behind with the
dishes, so they took up the counter space. Just as I was pulling
out the measuring cup, someone knocked on the door so I went to
answer it. There is a door in the diningroom leading to the
mudroom, which is the entrance off the front door. For those who
are unfamiliar with mudrooms, it’s what we call the entranceway
where we take our muddy or wet shoes before entering the house.
Plus, it works well for a buffer to keep Pickles from flying out
the open front door.

Pickles loves company so when I took so long
speaking to my caller, I guess he decided to investigate and try to
see who came to visit. He has to go through the kitchen on the way
to the diningroom and the bag of flour obviously caught his
interest because I returned to find that he had chewed a hole in
the bag, releasing flour all over the floor with Pickles smack dab
in the middle, taking a sand bath. He was having a great old time
and flour was floating through the air in a cloud. Pickles was
completely white and Neeka was getting grayer by the minute while
he stood near Pickles observing the mayhem. I was so bloody irked
with the mess he left me to clean that I was tempted to dump him in
a sink full of water just to watch him turn to glue. When I took
him back to his playstand, he gave one big, happy fluff-up and now
I had flour floating all over the livingroom. ARG!

It’s funny that something that would usually
be scary to Pickles, ceases to be scary if it’s on the floor. If I
were to hold up gallon jug of milk, a carton of pop or a bag of
groceries, he would be uncomfortable and ready to flee. But one day
we brought groceries in from the car and set them on the floor,
just inside the door. I started picking up bags, one at a time, to
put everything away and when I went back for another bag, there was
Pickles, snapping the plastic lid of the milk. I snatched it away
from him and, unperturbed; he headed for the pop box and set to
ripping it open. I snatched that away too, set them on the counter
and by the time I turned back to him, he had proceeded to rip open
all the grocery bags. There was not one single thing on the floor
or in the bags that scared him but when I set him up on his
playstand, I went back and grabbed a bag to see what would happen
if I held it in front of him and sure enough, he ran to the
furthest perch away from the evil bag. Retard.

Pickles is so cute when he’s walking on the
floor, especially if he’s not sure if he really wants to be there,
or if we stand in his way. When he’s being a little timid, he does
his slow motion chicken walk, head slowly bobbing with each step
and practically tippy-toeing. Then he gets really close to
something he’s not sure about, cranes his neck as close as possible
from as far away as possible, suddenly imagines it’s attacking him
and bolts – half hopping, half flying to safety. If we stand in his
way and keep him from going somewhere, he will turn around so he’s
facing away from us and walk backwards to where he wants to go. He
seems to think he is fooling us into thinking; if he’s facing the
other way, he must be walking away from us. So we let him buzz
around backwards just for a laugh.

There was another time Pickles took a walk.
I’m sure some of you are thinking,
my God, that
bird ventures out alone a lot!
But it only seems like that
because, remember, these thing have all happened over the course of
nine years. Anyway, I was taking a bath with the door closed and
this door has a few inch gap at the bottom – I don’t know why, the
place came like this and we’ve just never got around to replacing
the door because we keep planning to remodel it and make it bigger.
While I was lying in the tub, I hear a little voice saying, “Want
out”. I glance over and there’s Pickles trying to squeeze under the
door. He doesn’t say, “Want in” and maybe to him, wanting ‘out’ of
the hall and into the bathroom is the same thing.

I was done anyway so I got up, dried myself
and opened the door to let Pickles in. But he was gone. I looked
all over in the back rooms and couldn’t find him but these days I
have a little helper. “Where’d Pickles go, Neeka?” Neeka
immediately runs to the chair next to the bed and there’s Pickles,
bobbing his head and nose laughing, as usual. That bird gets a real
kick out of being invisible and unfindable.

He must have climbed up the clothes that were
draped across the chair and had already managed to decorate my
pajamas with nice little holes. I asked him to step up but he said,
“No!” and punctuated his point but snapping a button off in one
quick motion.

I insisted he step up and once he did, he
flipped over, upside down on my hand. Each time I righted him back
up, over he went again. I gave up and headed down the hall to put
him on his stand, hands at my side, Pickles dangling a couple of
feet off the ground. As we passed through the kitchen, Pickles
found himself over top of Daddy’s work boots and immediately let go
and fell part way inside one of them. He loves Daddy’s boots and
there they were, all alone and unattended, just ripe for the
picking. He hopped off and onto the floor, grabbed a shoelace and
began a tugging on it. The boots ain’t budging. “Stuck” he said, as
he kept trying.

Neeka figured, if Pickles could play with the
boots, so could he, so he grabbed the shoelace on the other side
and started pulling. Bird on one side, dog on the other, playing
tug-a-war. Neeka’s stronger so the boot started edging his way and
each time Neeka tugged, Pickles slid with the boot, shoelace still
in his beak. Neeka pulled him around for a minute but finally
Pickles realized he was losing ground and there was just no point,
so he headed in another direction. And that’s when his fun ended, I
took him home.

So, Pickles may not be technically flighted
but he gets around to some degree with both his wings and his feet.
Ideally, he would be free to fly and be a bird but he isn’t in the
wild and we can’t give a captive bird the same freedom he would
enjoy in nature. Not without taking away other freedoms that he
enjoys in our home. If Pickles were flighted, we would need to
confine him to his cage a heck of a lot more. And that’s not an
option for any of us.

“
Parrots will do as they
please, humans should relax and get used to the idea.”

“
Mom's always bossing me
around - don't do this, don't do that.  I finally told her,
"You're not the boss of me, you don't own me!"  And she said,
"Yes I am, and yes I do.  I paid a lot of cash for you and I
own your ass."  "Oh YEAH?!" I said "Well you're ... you've ...
you got RIPPED OFF MAN!"  I sure told her eh?”

“
When I get mad because I’m
not getting what I want and you think I’m banging my toys? I'm not.
I'm communicating in Morse code cuz you don't seem to
UNDERSTAND ENGLISH!”

“
Ohhh, I wish I could slam a
door.  Wouldn't that just be the topping on the cake?  To
be able to argue with mom, stomp out of the room and slam the door
behind me.  I tried it once, but the door just kinda went
'click'.  But it was a loud click.  I think she got the
point.”

“
When the world says, "Give
up" hope whispers, "Try it one more time".  Mom says, "Try
that again and I’ll wring your little neck".  I don't have a
hope in hell.”

“
Mom didn't turn on the TV
for me this morning so I got a hold of the remote control and in
the process of trying to make it work, I got a little carried away
and chewed it to pieces.  Mom said "Didn't you see the 'ON'
button??"  I said "Yes, but I don't believe everything I
read.”

“
You know how annoying it is
when you're down to the last bite of something really good and
somebody snatches it away and eats it themselves? 
Well, that's not true.  It didn't annoy me at all
today when I snatched the last bite of mom's muffin.”

““
I read that the average
human body is comprised of approximately 61% water. When I told
mom, she didn't believe it and we had an argu-ment. Arguing with
her is a game that you're just not going to win so I re-sorted to
name calling and called her a big ugly bag of mostly water. Then I
turned and ran.”

“
I was on the counter and
tried to chew on the corner of the wall. Mom told me to leave it
alone. I looked at her and went for the wall again. Mom told me to
stop it. I paused then went right back to it. Mom told me - STOP
IT! But I still persisted. She said "What's the matter with you?
Are you mentally challenged?" I said, "No, but I'm willing to
learn."“

“
Sometimes, when I meet new
people, I say really stupid things. It's the answers to the stupid
questions that I anticipate they're going to ask.”

“
I'm not supposed to bite,
and I'm not supposed to drink alcohol but if you ignore the rules
during a party, you can hit 2 birds with one stone.”

The ‘dominance’ theories that you hear some
people talking about with regards to parrots is something that
really sticks in my craw. Height and dominance always seem to be
lumped together and I’ve often heard that a parrot should never be
allowed to perch above you and that it makes the bird think he’s
dominating you. Perhaps that may be true with some birds but it
certainly wasn’t the case with Pickles. I have never read anything,
from a good source, that says the most dominant parrot is the
highest one perched in trees. What I have read is that they
actually prefer to be closer to the ground for foraging and that
the higher bird is a quicker meal for birds of prey.

The only reason Pickles likes to be higher
than us is for a better view and for ambushing reasons. Recently, I
didn’t realize Neil had placed Pickles on his set of boings and
ropes in the dining room and I walked directly under him. Pickles
saw his opportunity and nailed me on top of the head with his beak,
hard. I yelled out in pain but I doubt it was heard over his
exuberant cries of victory. “AHA! SCORE! AHAAAA!” and then a bout
of laughing, head bobbing, wing flapping and laughing. He lives for
those moments but it’s got nothing to do with dominance and
everything to do with personal entertainment, at my expense. This
is playing, not dominating – as far as I’m concerned.

Then there’s the advice about dominating your
bird – showing him who is boss. A little research will quickly
dispel this notion and indicate that practicing domination could
have disastrous results. In my opinion and experience, Positive
Reinforcement (PR) will produce a more desirable outcome, by far.
When people tout dominance over a bird, dig a little further into
their lives. What issues are they having, is their bird caged all
the time, how much of their bird’s day is spent outside the cage,
does their bird ever bite, does he pluck, how old is he/she, what
species of parrot, at what age did they acquire the bird and from
where? A snapshot of their lives might produce some insight as to
whether or not you want to take advice from them.

When we first got Pickles, if we tried to
dominate him or force him to behave in any way, he dug his heels in
and either got nasty or became distant and miserable. Mostly he
made us pay in blood and we quickly realized this was a bird that
could acquire a taste for it and soon studied up on PR.

Some people say you should never look a
parrot directly in the eyes. They say it produces a prey response,
that human eyes resemble the eyes of a predator. Perhaps in some
cases but not in Pickles. He demands you look him in the eye. He
wants us to watch him when he’s acting silly and he wants us to
look him in the eye when we’re speaking to him. At a very early
age, he would sit on my shoulder while we were talking and gently
tug on my lip until my head and eyes were turned toward him which
was difficult because you go cross-eyed staring at him so
close.

No, dominating a parrot and taking away his
free will is just not an option for us.

“
Mama says I have a sick
sense of humor.  I need to find a thermometer to take its
temperature and I will need some drugs and a hot water
bottle.  I must keep it warm with nice heavy blankets and feed
it chicken soup.  I'm very worried cuz I don't want it to
die.”

“
All I want is someone to
listen to me.  Listen to me talk and especially listen to the
wonderful sounds I can make.  And I want them to listen
close.  Real close.  So I can break their
eardrums.”

“
I could have asked dad for
his candy but I decided - if I’m gonna ask for anything, I'd
steal it first and ask for forgiveness.”

“
Mom gave me a bowl of
ice-cubes to play with and I tried to revive them all by
placing them, one-by-one on the heater vents.  When I
looked later, they were all gone.  I was hoping they'd come
back to thank me but I guess they just went on with their
lives.”

““
If you're helping mommy
bake a cake and you notice she didn't put any potato in it, make
sure you grab one and throw it in when she's not looking. 
Later, she'll thank you.”

“
I got a hold of mom's
notepad with all her important information on it.  It was so
much fun - ripping pages off, chewing them up, sharing with the
dog.  It was great, until mom caught me.  "PICKLES!! I'm
gonna wring your little neck!!!" she shouted.  "Sorry" I said
with a smile.”