Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (12 page)

Pickles has always liked thunderstorms,
because we always made a party out of it when he was very young,
and he likes them loud. Even if the first one scares the crap out
of him, he thinks this is marvelous music and will dance to it.

There’s another CD he likes - Loons In The
Mist. It plays soft music with running water, wild birds and a
loon. Pickles does perfect imitations of the four loon calls (or is
it 5?) and originally learned them on our lake trips. African Greys
can copy these calls beautifully; you’d never know the difference
and it’s amazing to listen to. I highly recommend buying them a CD
or there’s lots of audio you can play or download to your computer
by doing a quick Google search. They pick it up quickly; or at
least, Pickles did.

Of course, there are his musical toys and he
goes through those little music discs very quickly. It’s very
annoying when they’re running out of battery power because they
either start emitting sour notes in slow motion, or they start to
skip back to the beginning after a couple of bars. Pickles doesn’t
care, it’s just more cool noise for him to copy – forever.

The TV
must
be on at
all times so he can keep up with the advertisement jingles. If a
commercial has beeps and whistles or any kind of electronic sounds,
Pickles will play the sounds right along with the ad. First thing
in the morning, that TV has to be turned on or he’s miserable and
cranky until it is. He thinks it’s just a noisy lamp and demands
“Lights on!” if we turn on his UV light and walk away forgetting
about the TV. It shines light; therefore it must
be
a light.

He likes, and copies, Neeka’s squeaky toys
but especially likes the rubber chicken. He scares the crap out of
me with that sound; it’s like a sudden, loud, distress call that
gets me every time.

You would think that his fondness for music
would encourage him to sing more songs, wouldn’t you? He used to,
but now usually asks me “Wanna sing a song?” and I’ll say “What
song?” and then he’ll sing the first line of the song he wants then
stop and wait for me to sing the rest. When he’s tired of that
song, he’ll give me the buzzer and ask “Wanna sing another song?”
and we continue on like the first one. I don’t know if he’s lazy or
if he just prefers dancing to other people’s songs.

But whistle! Now that’s the best music EVER!
I still haven’t found any whistling CD’s so he only learns from the
TV, the neighbor when we’re outside, or me. He’s an amazing
whistler and will copy my whistles but correct the bad notes as he
learns it. He makes up his own whistle songs, which are incredibly
beautiful and always in perfect pitch. That’s unbelievable to
me.

Yup, music. And anything that makes a racket.
Even Neeka’s pop bottle full of large beads that makes so much
racket, you can’t hear anything else. I could probably buy a
trombone, play it right in his ear and he’d just dance. He’ll never
make a career out of his dancing but he likes to bob and lately
he’s been swaying his head back and forth to the side, which is
pretty cute.

He lives for date night – or party night, to
him. He’ll stay up later at night for a party and even when he’s
had enough and climbs into his cage, he prefers to go straight into
his tent and listen to the music as he goes to sleep rather than
play with toys. A couple of minutes later, we can take a peek and
he’s got his head tucked under his wing, fast asleep. It doesn’t
bother him one bit if we stay up all night listening to music and
he’s bright eyed and cheerful the next day.

“
Last night I felt like
going to bed early so at 4:30 I climbed in my cage, said "Lights
off" and waited for my bedtime almond. Mom said it was too early so
I climbed out & right back in and said "Now?" Mom said no. I
climbed back out, back in & said "Now?" Mom kept saying no, I
kept going back & forth asking "Now? until she gave up, gave me
my almond and covered me up. Don't know why she didn't listen the
first time.”

“
Mommy gave me a tough
almond to crack before I went to bed.  I don't like to work
too hard for my almonds & this one didn't have a nice crack to
get started with.  I threw it to the cage bottom, expecting
her to bring me another one or crack this one for me.  She
didn't.  I couldn't give in infront of her so I had to wait
til I was covered and sneak down and get it.  She's a tough
nut to crack.”

“
I'm a 'sleep in'
kinda bird.  I don't like to get up early.  What's with
that saying "early to bed, early to rise"?  Like, how early is
early?  If you go to bed
early - how
early?  If you went to bed early - how early are you supposed
to get up?  Like, is a minute later good enough?  I get
cranky if I get up to early - whenever that is.”

“
Sometimes, when I’m feeling
sleepy, I turn my head so mommy can only see one eye.  Then,
as I start nodding off, mommy thinks I’m winking at her and she
feels flattered.”

“
Mommy's mean.  Every
time she sees me yawn, she yawns too and it makes me stop
mid-yawn.  I wait for her to finish her yawn and then I try to
yawn again but she mocks me again and makes me stop.  I can't
yawn when somebody's mocking my yawn.  Yawning is serious
business and she shouldn't mess with it.  Nothing worse than a
ruined yawn.  I need a yawn.  Big bad yawn.  If you
say yawn enough times, it stops making any sense. 
Yawn.”

“
You know when you fall
asleep and then you dream you're falling, falling, falling ....
They say that if you ever hit bottom in your dream, you're
dead.  I think they're confusing that will real
life.”

“
When I shut my eyes, the
whole world dies until I open them again.  I hold the power of
life and death.  It's a burden I must carry.”

“
The sun rises and says Good
Morning and keeps us company the whole day long.  At the end
of its day, he lays down and his head disappears as he pulls
the land, like a blanket, to cover him and says Good Night. 
He leaves the moon and the stars for night lights but dammit, who
is he to tell us when to go to bed.  He's not the boss of
me.”

“
Mom took the cover off my
cage this morning and I was still sleeping in my tent.  "It's
morning already?" I asked.  "Time flies" she answered. 
"I don't care if time flies in to a window and breaks its neck", I
snapped "I asked if it's morning already".  Ask a simple
question.”

Pickles loves going to bed and bedtime is
getting earlier and earlier as time goes by. This past winter, he’s
decided 4:00pm is the time to dismiss us and get some ‘alone’ time.
Last summer, I think it was 5:00pm or 6:00pm and at this rate, he’s
not going to bother getting up in the morning at all. When we first
got him, he stayed up until ten or eleven at night and even then,
he was reluctant to go in the cage. It’s not that he always wants
to go to sleep because usually, but not always, he’ll play with his
bucket of toys or sit and talk to himself. Sometimes he’ll play and
talk, then crawl in his tent to sleep for a while but after an hour
or so, he’s back up playing and talking again.

The white sheet we use to cover him, is
placed so that he can peer around at us or go to a lower branch to
see us. He’s not usually interested in whatever we’re doing and not
interested in talking to us but once in a while he’ll go down to a
lower branch and chat a bit, or just gaze at us for awhile.

There was one night though, when he seemed
particularly restless. We could hear crashing going on as he threw
every toy out of his bucket in quick succession then kept climbing
down to the bottom of the cage and back up again. He started pacing
on his perches and muttering to himself, punctuated with the odd
loud squawk. Eventually we noticed him clinging to his cage bars,
waving and squawking. “What’s up Pickles? I asked. “Want music!
Bang, bang!” he exclaimed. We told him we weren’t going to play any
music for him so he went pack to pacing, climbing and muttering.
Before long, he was clinging to his cage bars again and demanding
“Music. Bang, bang.”

I figured he wanted out so I went to open the
cage and that’s when I noticed his maraca sitting on the TV stand;
I had picked up his old, dirty one but forgot to put the new one in
his bucket. I opened the cage to hand it to him and he ripped it
out of my hand then stood there shaking it at me with his talon as
if to say
Stop touching my STUFF!
All was
well after that; he had what he wanted.

In my first book, I described his bedtime
routine – telling us “Lights off”, giving him his almond and ending
with him telling us “Want covered.” and only one thing has changed
since then. Now, as he’s eating his almond, he politely tells us
“Want covered” and whistles his bedtime song as we do it.

There was a time, long ago, when Pickles
would sometimes refuse to go to bed. Sometimes it would work for us
to turn off the lights and sometimes we could bribe him into the
cage by putting his favorite treat inside but those things didn’t
always work. It was when we started allowing him to be out of his
cage all the time that going to bed became enjoyable to him.
Obviously, the more time a bird has out of his cage, the easier it
is to get them back inside and since Pickles is never locked in his
cage, he knows that we’ll let him out any time he wants.

Plus, all his food and water is in the cage
and he knows that he is free to go inside without us slamming the
door behind him. For the longest time, when we first started giving
him his freedom, he would practically starve because he was afraid
we would lock him in if he went for a nosh.

Pickles is very particular about his night
time almonds, with any nuts actually. He doesn’t like to work too
hard to get the nuts out of the shells and if he can’t find a crack
or chip as he rolls it around between his talon and tongue, it’s
thrown to the ground. He’ll insist on a new one so we’ll either
give him one or slightly crack it for him. However, if we leave the
old one where he dropped it, he’ll eventually sneak down to get it
and suddenly he doesn’t have any problem breaking it open.

I gave him a solid one once and he promptly
dropped it and asked, “Wanna nudder snack.” I told him to eat what
I gave him and walked away to do the dishes. Not long afterwards, I
heard him climb down his cage and I thought he was going to get the
one he dropped. All was quiet so I assumed that’s what happened
until I heard a little voice coming from behind me on the floor.
“He said he’d be right back,” said Pickles. (He gets ‘you’ and ‘he’
mixed up and doesn’t say ‘she’ at all.) “I did
not
say I’d be right back, and what are you doing out
here?” I responded. “Wanna snack” he said, “Lights off” he added,
so I picked him up and reached on top of the fridge for a better,
easier almond for him.

As I did this, he was able to snatch a fridge
magnet and when I tried to take it from his beak, he attempted to
fly away with it but he managed to grab the heaviest one on the
fridge which weighed him down so he dropped like a rock to the
floor. I bent to grab either him or the magnet but he took off
running, back to his cage. He attempted to climb up with it, and
almost succeeded, but it was way too big and bulky so he ended up
dropping it and carried on up the cage as if he meant to do
that.

Once he was on top of the cage, I handed him
his almond but he didn’t want it - he wanted the magnet in my other
hand. I thought
oh,
what
the heck
and handed it to him. In about 3 seconds, he
managed to snap it in half and I thought
jeez! He
couldn’t crack and almond shell but he sure as heck managed to
crack something a whole lot harder!
I really liked that
fridge magnet.

Pickles yawns when he’s getting tired, just
like anybody, and I can’t resist mocking him when he does. Just as
he gets his beak open nice and wide, I open my own mouth wide,
which causes him to stop and look at me. He slowly closes his mouth
and stares at me until the need to yawn overcomes him again. He
starts to yawn; I start to yawn – making a big production of it. He
stops. I stop. He stares. But he really has to yawn so he does it
again but this time he does it slower while keeping an eye on me. I
wait. He figures it’s safe so he goes for the big one but nope,
he’s interrupted by me yawning again. He keeps testing me by
pretending he’s going to yawn and barely opening his mouth so I
start mocking him by opening and shutting my mouth too. Eventually,
he turns his back on me in disgust, refusing to look at me until he
manages a nice yawn. Aren’t I horrible?

Pickles used to say “Big Bad Yawn” like the
old Jimmy Dean song “Big Bad John” but he seems to have dropped it
from his vocabulary lately. Maybe his refusal to say it stems from
his yawning experiences with me. Lol.

He’s had a tent to sleep in since he was very
young and for a few months, he stopped sleeping in it. My mom makes
them for me and I have several of them so I can swap them out to
wash them every few days. The bottom is made of stiff plastic (sewn
inside the material) and one time, I threw them in the washing
machine with some towels and three or four of them broke in half,
lengthwise along the bottom from the extra weight in the machine.
At one point, the rest were dirty so I tried hanging the broken
ones in his cage and Pickles didn’t seem to mind. I guess it was
like a little hammock for him.

I ended up using all the broken ones and when
I finally washed the lot of them, I gave him one of the good ones.
It wasn’t until many weeks later that we noticed he hadn’t been
sleeping in them and by then, I’d forgotten about the broken ones
so I kept hanging the good ones. I kept swapping them out anyway
since they tend to get filled with his dander and I kept washing
them and hanging them until one day, I was behind in my laundry and
I resorted to hanging a broken one again. He was in like flint and
back to sleeping in his tents. He still prefers the cracked ones
but will settle for anything these days.