Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (10 page)

“
You know what would be
awesome about living in Hell?  You probably wouldn't
get in trouble for chewing holes in towels.”

“
They say that alot of
people have heart attacks while watching the Super Bowl cuz they
get so excited.  They say not to drink, smoke or eat fatty
foods on Super Bowl day.  They should add one more thing to
that list .... don't go to sleep on a perch next to someone who's
team just scored.”

“
Mommy was looking behind
her and she walked into the corner of the wall next to my
playstand.  She had company at the time and said it was
humiliating.  I think she meant to say 'entertaining' cuz it
gave me a good laugh.”

“
A wise bird will sit on his
perch and contemplate the universe.  But a stupid bird will
tangle himself in his ropes, hang upside down and go "uh oh". 
I am the latter.”

“
If you're suspended on a
toy that's suspended by sisal rope?  It's not a good idea to
chew through the sisal.”

“
I fell off my perch
today.  I was trying to do Jazz Hands.”

Pickles is becoming more of a sedentary bird
as he ages. Toys don’t hold the same excitement they once did and,
although he still plays with them sometimes, he prefers to hang
around on boings or ropes with bells or flatfoot along
surfaces.

He loves to hang upside down or chew up the
ropes or lay in ambush in hopes that I will forget he’s there and
walk below his ropes so he can bonk me on the head. This is painful
for me but hilarious to him and always draws an outburst of laughs
from him. He hit me so hard with his beak one time that I really
hollered at him and in-between laughs, he just yelled at me to
“Stop it!” as if I had no cause to be so upset.

He really gets going on the boings sometimes,
especially when he gets flapping and makes them go in wild circles.
It’s hard to find enough room for a boing that is easily coerced
into slamming against walls. You can see his beak open and grabbing
for the wall as he flies the bottom of the boing into larger and
larger circles, reaching closer and closer to the wall. I mean, he
must
know
it’s going to happen each time he
goes crazy, but it’s like he’s doing it on purpose, that it’s not a
successful boing swing if he doesn’t plow into a wall.

Pickles likes to flap around a branch and
especially likes to pretend he’s falling backwards and make out
like gravity is pulling him and that it’s scary (as mentioned in
the story in my first book) and one time he was flapping around and
around the top branch of his playstand then swung across his
hanging toys like Tarzan on vines to a lower branch where he hurled
himself forward, attempting to do a flip&fly around the branch.
It never occurred to him that there wasn’t enough room so his beak
hit the playstand platform with a thud. He hung upside down on his
face with his wings splayed across the platform, talons still
clinging to the branch – but just for a moment. As if to prove to
me that he ‘meant’ to do that, he kinda pushed with his wings and
slowly slid his beak along the bottom, beneath the branch and once
through to the other side, flapped his way back up on the branch,
shook out his feathers with an excited flourish, announced “Be
right back” and promptly fell right over again – this time tucking
his body closer to the branch and succeeding in doing a tight
little flip&flop. What a boob.

We’re in the middle of renovating rooms (we
always are) so we think nothing of hanging stuff all over walls and
ceilings for Pickles and even nailed a wooden box onto the wall
near his ropes. It has a nice cubbyhole with 2 entrances, a balcony
and a half-open roof that he can access. He likes this – he likes
to play in it or just take a nap.

I was pretty angry when Neil first built the
box. I had told him to build it with Pickles next to him, rather
than present it to him once it was built. But he didn’t listen.
Neil originally hung it from the ceiling and when he took Pickles
over to it, Pickles got all freaked out and refused to go near it
for months. We finally took it down and put it away then recently
we pulled it back out and put it on the floor in the livingroom,
gradually moving it closer and closer to Pickles’ area until
finally he hopped on it one day when Neil picked it up off the
floor. Once he was happy playing in it, we nailed it onto the wall
and he immediately took to it.

Pickles has his Fun Factory above his cage
and leaning against the outside top perch to steady it. He will
spend a lot of time inside it or perched in the openings, usually
facing inward so that he can talk and make cool echoing sounds. He
enjoys playing peek-a-boo through the different holes and also
likes to reach through the top to bang the bell or hang off the
chain.

I couldn’t believe he took to that big thing
so quickly. When we pulled it out of the packaging, he was
practically falling off his perch to get at it. As Neil reached up
to hook it on the ceiling, Pickles plunged straight through one of
the holes and into the centre, startling Neil into dropping the
ball onto the top of the cage. I panicked thinking this would freak
him out and make the Factory a scary thing for the rest of his
life. The ball fell with a bang and rolled to one side, rolling
Pickles with it and coming to a stop with Pickles on his back.
Pickles lay there momentarily then flipped himself up on his feet
with a “Woo Hoo!” then started walking around inside looking a
little like a hamster in a hamsterball.

The Factory moved sluggishly and there were
many cage obstacles that kept it from moving to quickly or too far
but at one point Pickles jumped on the rim of one of the entrance
holes causing the ball to roll and dump Pickles out on the cage.
Pickles dove back in the hole but it rolled backwards and pinned
his back toes against the bars and this put him in a bit of a panic
as Neil quickly rolled it loose. Now he’s gonna be afraid of it, I
thought but Pickles chose to get angry instead and he stood on the
cage flapping, screaming and growling his displeasure. He ran,
stomping around and around it until he blew off steam then with a
running jump, landed right back in the middle of it and sat calmly
while Neil fastened it to the ceiling. He didn’t move from the
middle for a good hour, he just sat there talking to the ball and
chewing now and then on the items hanging from it.

The first time he managed to hoist himself up
through the top hole, he realized how difficult it was going to be
to climb back in. He stood, balanced on the slippery top, looking
down into the hole. “Uh oh” he said quietly “What’s this?” he
added. I could see him in the ball through the holes as he held on
to the chain with his beak and tried to lower himself, butt first,
down through the top hole. He let go of the rim, dangling from his
beak as his talons searched desperately for a foothold but there
were none to be found. I was reminded of one of those circus
performers as he hung by his teeth, body swinging and swaying in
the air. Since he had let go of the opening, it was now next to
impossible to bend his body back up to grab it again with his
talons and after some useless efforts he swayed in little half
circles on the chain, back and forth, catching my eye on the turns
and pleading for me to help him. I didn’t. I wanted to watch him
sweat it out for a bit longer because it was just too interesting
to end. He finally had no recourse but to let go and drop. He
landed on his feet like a cat, stood stunned for a moment then shot
right back up through the hole to do it all over again and practice
his dismounting technique.

Another successful hit was the hamster log
cabin Neil found in the hamster section of a pet store. There’s all
kinds of stuff in that department and we often find the best things
there. It’s also where we first found the sugar cane. The cabin
consists of straight branches strung together with strong, but
flexible, wire so you can bend it into shape. We keep meaning to
make more of them with materials we have to make a little maze for
him. Note to self:
Do it stupid
. Anyway,
when Neil brought it home and placed it on the base of Pickles’
playstand, Pickles entered it immediately and lay on his belly
going ‘oooooo’ and ‘mmmmm’ completely mesmerized. Later we hung a
little chain toy on it and he likes to hang upside down on it, or
lay on his back to play with it with his feet. He doesn’t often
play on his back these days, not like when he was younger but he
will do it in his log cabin and also with a cat ball he has hanging
off one of his branches near the bottom of his playstand.

I made the mistake of putting him in the
linen closet in the hallway one day. I set him on top of the towels
and he was in his glory – a dark place to flat foot and towels to
boot! At first, all he did was walk around like a chicken in slow
motion, head bobbing slowly with each step and clucking his
pleasure as he looked around the place. But after awhile, the
towels were just too tempting and he wanted to decorate them with
his pretty little beak holes so I tried to get him to step up. No
way. He liked this little cave and he wasn’t about to give up this
amazing new hideout.

After trying several times to have him
step-up, I thought I’d teach him a lesson so I closed the door on
him and walked away. I stood at the end of the hall listening for
scared little squawks but all was quiet. The phone rang, I went to
answer it and spent a couple of minutes dealing with the caller and
promptly forgot all about Pickles. About five minutes later, I
remembered and walked down the hall to rescue him. When I opened
the door, he was lying on his belly all fluffed up and I could tell
by his eyes that he’d gone to sleep – they were just tiny little
slits. “You’re kidding me, right? I asked. But he wasn’t. I had a
heck of a time getting him out of there and finally had to resort
to physically picking him up with my hands and got a few light
beaks for my efforts.

A couple of times since then, I’ve laid old
towels across the top of the good ones and let him play in there
but now he’s decided that the wooden frame needs to come down and
won’t leave it alone so I’ve stopped allowing him in. He badly
wants back there and every time I walk down the hall with him on my
hand, he does the ‘Grey Lean’ to show me where to go and he leans
so far as we pass by that he literally flips upside down on my hand
in his effort to reach the closet.

I wrote about how he likes the chest freezer
in the laundry room in my last book, and this is still a great
pastime for him. The trouble is, the old freezer emits a
high-pitched whistling, humming sound and Pickles has started
copying it, much to my annoyance. I was doing laundry one day while
Pickles had his head in a cardboard box that I keep on the freezer
for him to play in and I was shaking out a sheet, which came loose
from one hand and fell in a crumple on Neeka below me. I dropped
the other end to see what Neeka would do, thinking this might be
fun for him and I was right. He started leaping around growling and
tugging at the sheet and the commotion attracted Pickles. Pickles
pulled his head from the box, turned to look, spotted this leaping,
growling entity and totally freaked out. He was up in the air in a
flash, trying to escape the small room but the sheet monster was
blocking his escape route. I’d never seen him fly so much in one
spot. At times he looked like an Osprey, hovering in one place,
watching the fish below and the rest of the time he flapped and
flew in tight little circles – screaming the whole time. I flipped
the sheet to show him that it was just Neeka and, even though he
was still a little freaked, he was now brave enough to do a fly-by
and flew over Neeka and out the door, down the hall and into the
livingroom.

I found him on top of his cage, doing that
low crouched, leaning forward, wings quivering out from his body,
ready for take-off, but not quite sure stance. Because by now he
had realized it was just the dog and he was irked that he was back
on his cage and away from all the laundry room fun. “Wanna go to
the freezer” he spat at me, so I gave him my hand and took him back
to finish the laundry. He was fine after that but I couldn’t resist
going “ooooo, look Pickles, a scary sheet. ooooooo” as I waved the
sheet slighty toward him, as if it might be coming to get him. He
knew what I was doing and he just sat there, peering up at me as if
to say “Yeah, yeah. Scared of a sheet. Ha, ha. So funny I forgot to
laugh.”

But Pickles’ very favorite source of
entertainment is the kitchen counter. He could stay there for hours
if we let him and sometimes we’ll clear everything off, place him
there and just sit in the kitchen watching him. He’ll dash around,
running flat footed or play with some talon toys we keep up there
and after awhile he’ll fluff up content to just sit there quietly
and even take a little nap. If we’re feeling energetic, we’ll open
the silverware drawer for him to pick up and throw all he can to
the floor.

I don’t know if all Greys do it but he does
what we call the Snow Shovel, where he walks or runs along the
surface with his beak to the ground honking like a goose the whole
time. Not short honks but one long honk. He does the same thing
against walls. I asked him why he does that and he stopped for a
moment and said “Huh?” and went right back to it. I asked him if he
was a goose and he broke off the honk long enough to say “Juice?” I
corrected him and said “No, goose” to which he replied, “You’re all
wet.” I took that to mean I was wet behind the ears and pretty darn
ignorant to ask but it could have been because I had my hands in
dishwater at the time.

I should mention that we always have those
little electric socket plugs in the outlets in case Pickles should
decide to stick his beak in one of them. I’m surprised he’s never
tried to pull one out because I would think those little things
would be mighty tempting to a parrot. Although, we keep a couple of
extra ones on the counter for him to play with so maybe that’s why
he doesn’t feel the need to pull them out.