Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (19 page)

“
If you're sitting on a
perch and you fall off and you climb back on and you fall off
again, I think you should sit in a chair instead of a bucking
perch.”

“
Somewhere, something
incredible is waiting to be found.  It's my job to find
it.  I don't know what it is but I’m pretty sure it's under
the fridge.”

“
You know what it is that I
hate the most?  It's not brocolli and it's not bananas. 
No, wait.  It IS brocolli.  I got mixed up.”

“
If kids ever ask you how
the Easter Bunny can lay chocolate eggs, I think a good answer
would be "Those aren't chocolate eggs, my little
friend.”

“
I didn't burn a flag or
anything, but is it illegal to poke holes in it with your
beak?  It's just a hypthothetical question, in case I need to
bury the hypothetical evidence.”

“
When I die and go to the
Pearly Gates to be judged, I'm gonna snap all those pearls off the
gates and play with them.  I hope that doesn't influence their
decision.”

“
Mom says I have all the
physical indications of being a male but says just for fun, one day
she will get me deinade.  Well, that's nice of her but I’d
rather have lemonade.”

Pickles isn’t the perfect parrot, I don’t
know if there’s any perfect parrot. He has his quirks, his
tantrums, and now and then some behavioral problems pop up. It’s
not always easy and its not always fun, but all in all he fits us
well. I often wonder what other Greys are like, and if they have
the same mannerisms. I know that each bird has individual
personalities but I’ve never spent enough time around any other
Grey to find out just how similar, or unsimilar, they actually are.
What are some of the sounds they make? Of all the sounds Pickles
makes, how many are natural to Greys and how many are things he’s
picked up on his own? How much of his behavior is normal Grey
behavior and how much is individual behavior? Regardless, I could
spend hours just sitting and watching Pickles and wondering about
his thought processes.

As far as his basic behavior goes, he’s
basically a good bird – a little demanding and nippy at times – but
usually cheerful and personable. He can get angry at times but
never holds a grudge for long. Usually, just ignoring him or asking
if he wants to sing a song will snap him out of a bad mood. I’ve
heard that some birds will get angry or snub a person who goes away
for extended periods but Pickles is happy to have someone return
after a long absence. He’ll pine in the meantime, or get cranky as
hell if someone is gone too long and he’ll certainly take it out on
the person left behind but after a day or two, he almost seems to
forget there was ever another family member.

I know that some people might be annoyed by a
Grey but Pickles noises never bother me; except for his demanding
little squawk, but mostly he makes happy sounds or words and this
house wouldn’t be the same without his happy chatter. Funny how
people find this annoying but they don’t notice the racket that
small children make. Personally, I find children’s noises can be
extremely annoying a lot of the time but then, I’m not used to
children around me. I love kids, but only for brief periods.

We don’t spend a lot of time reprimanding
Pickles - he’s usually pretty good and knows his boundaries - but
when he does something like trying to chew on the curtains while on
the couch, we can’t help but tell him he’s a bad boy. What a little
suck-up he is when this happens. He instantly lowers his head,
baring his neck and asks for a scratch. The little stinker puts us
in the position of rewarding him for going for the curtains but we
can’t help but give him scratches when he acts so sweet.

I love his headless bird imitation. He likes
to tuck his head way back into his wings to sleep, making him look
like a parrot with his head lopped off. When people used to come in
the fly shop, they were never expecting to see a parrot and
certainly not a headless one so it generated a lot of second takes
and comments.

Hanging upside down. My God, is there a
parrot out there that doesn’t spend half his life hanging on ropes
or perches? Sometimes Pickles just hangs. Nothing else – he’s not
playing or swinging, he’s just hanging. I watched him hanging
completely still one day for about five minutes and finally asked
him “Doesn’t the blood rushing to your head bother you, Pickles?”
“Uh huh” he answered. “Are you gonna hang there all day?” I asked.
“Uh huh” he said. “I’d get a headache if I did that, Pickles.” He
just hung quietly for a moment then finally said, “You’re a
buggerbutt” and continued hanging and surveying the room upside
down. A hanging bird is a happy bird.

I hear that a lot of Greys are afraid of
insects. Pickles is okay with most but he will run from a spider.
Fruit flies bug him, as do mosquitoes, and he will flap his wings
and scream at them. But like his own downy feathers, the turbulence
just seems to draw them closer. Houseflies and bees are chased down
and one of these days, he’s going to get a bad sting out in the
aviary.

If he’s on the couch, he tries to catch any
sort of fly that’s crawling on the window. He runs back and forth
across the back of the couch with his beak wide open and tongue
sticking out trying to snatch it up. He caught one once and I don’t
know if he bit into it or swallowed it whole but the look on his
face was priceless. I had never seen his eyes so wide. Regardless,
he still chases them.

Pickles loves beak rubs and tapping; his eyes
glaze over and he’s in heaven. After a good rub or tap, he likes to
place his beak in the bicycle rack, which means sticking his beak
between two fingers of a loose fist. He’s been known to go to sleep
that way.

Pickles hates silence and there is no noise
too loud for him. A sudden loud noise can startle him but even
then, he laughs about it afterwards. The TV or stereo must be on at
all times and ‘music’ is the word he uses for both, although he has
been known to demand, “Want some racket!”

I’ve seen a lot of pictures of Greys with one
talon in their beak and Pickles does this too. Sometimes he kind of
bites the tip of his nail and/or pulls it from his beak with a
quick snap. People think this is cute but usually, with Pickles
anyway, it’s an indication of stress. He only seems to do it when
he’s irritated or a little scared. There are times he’s just
cleaning his nails but that quick little snap is not cleaning.
We’ve always called that, his ‘Minnie Me’ impression.

It’s interesting watching his beak, tongue
and throat when he talks or makes sounds and it’s pretty cool that
they can make sounds with their mouth full. I like watching Pickles
do his ‘mmmwwaa’ kissy sound and the way his bottom mandible
vibrates with the effort as his tongue sticks out the side of his
beak. And that tongue is just the cutest little rubbery thing! As a
baby, he used to like it when I grabbed it gently and rolled it
around between my fingers.

I know that head shaking can be a sign of
illness but Pickles shakes his head, kind of flicks it, when he’s
happy. I’ve heard that they do this to adjust their vision. Of
course, he also shakes his whole body and fluffs up when he’s happy
– especially his tail. It does my heart good to see the happy tail
shake. It’s like a dog wagging his tail.

When Pickles was young, he used to spend a
lot of time chicken scratching on the bottom of his cage - beak
down to the ground, one leg stationary and the other scratching at
the paper as if he was digging a hole. I’m sure glad he stopped
because I got tired of replacing paper a few times a day.

If he wants out of the cage before we get
around to it, he will cling to the bars with his beak and one talon
while waving the other. We taught him to wave when he was young and
I always thought that’s what he was doing but I’m starting to think
it’s a natural thing, like chicken scratching, and he’s trying to
dig himself out from behind bars. It’s sweet to watch though.

Then there’s the sleepy, content beak
grinding which he does from under the cage covers at night. I like
that sound, even though I know he’s probably sharpening it on my
account. For a good bite.

Pickles doesn’t seem to care much for
mirrors. He definitely doesn’t think there’s another bird there and
he couldn’t care less about staring at himself. No vanity
there.

When Pickles was young, he used to purr when
he was cuddling and content but I haven’t noticed him to this in a
long time. I’ve heard they also do a sort of purr sound when
they’re annoyed but Pickles has seldom done this.

I wonder if all Greys do the ‘snow shovel’.
Pickles can’t walk across a flat surface without pushing his beak
along in front of him. He’ll also do it on a wall – he’ll start at
the bottom and run it as high as he can reach. He’s just got to
bang everything with his beak too. Sometimes it’s a straight on
bang, sometimes he flicks his head sideways to bang. He’ll do it so
hard that I’m afraid he’ll crack his beak.

There’s the little coos he does as he’s
falling asleep. This is a very comforting sound to me.

Then there’s the cluck cluck sound. This is
supposed to be a happy sound but when Pickles does it, it usually
accompanies a head bow - as if he wants a scratch – and then he
lunges for my finger. I never scratch him if he gives me the cluck
cluck. I guess it
is
a happy sound, he’s
happy about getting a chance to bite.

I also wonder if all Greys do that mechanical
kind of noise when someone’s talking on the phone. It’s a garbled
kind of sound and I guess that’s what the person on the other end
of the line sounds like to him. It’s so cute.

Pickles likes to share food. If we’re holding
a banana for him or feeding him something from a spoon, he will dig
in and then pull back and wait for us to have a share. He won’t
continue eating unless we at least pretend we’re eating too.

He has some sounds he makes and I’m not sure
if it is learned or a throwback from the wild. He has a little
‘brrrrr’ sound that he does if he’s being cheeky, disappointed or
sometimes when he’s just happy. He also does a perfect raspberry
when he’s frustrated or disappointed. I don’t ever remember us
making this sound; it’s not something we ever do.

Then, of course, there’s the little
screechy/squawky sound when he wants attention. I’ll bet all Greys
make this sound and it is so very annoying and hard on the ears.
This is the only sound that grates on me.

I get a kick out of his cobra imitation. He
stretches his body (long and sleek), waves his head and neck and
then strikes like a snake. I made a new hanging toy for
Pickles, a toy that was busy with all kinds of doodads and plastic
eggs hanging from it.  When I tried to clip it to his
playstand, he came running like a spider, ready to attack either
the toy or my fingers.  He gets so excited when I hang things,
and so impatient, that sometimes he'll nip me before I can finish
and remove my hand.  In my haste to get the heck out
of there, I wasn't able to secure it properly but I figured it
would do until I could get near it again.

I placed the toy in such a
spot on his playstand that he couldn't quite reach it.  He ran
from perch to perch trying to grab it, to no avail.  Finally,
he perched on the closest branch to the toy and attacked it like a
cobra striking it's prey but each time he struck, he lost his
balance and ended up doing a loop de loop all the way around the
branch.  A few loops later he decided that, as fun as this
was, he needed to come up with a better plan.  He climbed to
the branch the toy was hanging on, stood above the toy and tried to
raise it, talon over beak (like hand over hand), but it was too
heavy.  He resorted to standing above and yelling "Step up,
eh!  Ohhh, so bad!  Step up eh?" until he thought about
climbing down it.

He wrapped his body and wings around the toy
and proceeded to kill it but the toy got the best of him when it
came unhinged while Pickles rode it to the ground, landing with the
toy in a heap on top of him.  He scrambled out from beneath,
turned on a dime, dove into the toy pile, stomped on it and
beat it with his wings to a bloody pulp.

None of this was unusual for Pickles but what
he did next, was a first. After he had calmed down, he gathered a
couple of the smaller eggs and tried to get them beneath his body
like any bird who was protecting his eggs.  It was adorable
but I had to wonder if he's actually a girl bird.  He's never
been DNA tested but he has all the visual/physical
indications of a male Grey (tail feathers solid red beneath
with no variable red edging, proper grey and black wing banding and
the black lining and shape of the eye), then again, I'm sure males
take on the egg protection behavior though too.

Head bobs are always a happy sign. Pickles
never does it otherwise. Sometimes he’ll do it if he’s not sure of
something and he’ll start with a very slow bob and as he starts to
understand whatever it is that confused him, it’s like a light bulb
is going off and the more he thinks about it the faster and faster
his head bobs until he’s bobbing like a mad man and all excited. I
tend to do this too. It’s funny how we pick up mannerisms and
phrases our birds say. I will think about something and slowly nod
my head until the idea completely forms in my head and the whole
while, I’m nodding faster until I completely understand and then
I’m nodding as fast as my head will go. I know it’s silly, but I
can’t help it.

So, that’s just a few things that Pickles
does and I’m sure those behaviors aren’t unique to him.

“
Did you know that parrots
are so smart that in no time flat, they can train people to give
them treats by performing tricks?”