Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (8 page)

So, what does he say to me after I get him
settled on his diningroom boings? You guessed it – “Wanna go in the
aviary?” I just laughed at him but he was so mad at me for not
turning off the rain, he started flapping so aggressively, upside
down, on the bottom of his boing that he hit me in the waist,
grabbed the bottom of my shirt but forgot to let go as the momentum
of the boing attempted to carry him on it’s course which left him
suspended and swinging between my shirt and the boing. I started to
slowly back away, which was okay until the boing was stretched to
its limit – as was Pickles. I stood there waiting to see which he
would let go of – me, or the boing. He hung there, refusing to let
go of either.

Since he was so defenseless, I tickled him.
He let go of my shirt and the spring action of the boing caused it
to shoot straight back and loop into the air which made Pickles let
go and carry on upwards by himself. Just as he was about to hit the
ceiling, he gained control and flew straight to me, completing the
circle, landing on my shoulder and announcing, with a happy tail
shake, “Wanna go in the aviary.” It turned out to be a very long,
rainy day being cooped up with a parrot that didn’t really know
what he wanted but thought he did.

We are forever looking for ways to get him
into water. I think that sometimes Pickles is aware of the fact
that he needs to get his skin and feathers wet. His body must know
that it feels a little itchy and dirty and that water is going to
make it better so Pickles makes the attempt now and then but just
plain doesn’t like it. Result: There is no result – we can’t get
him wet enough to find out. We feel that this very well may be the
main cause of the plucking and are currently looking for new
options for getting him wet.

One thing I was trying for awhile (and just
now realized that we stopped) was giving him lots more walnuts. I
had read somewhere that walnuts are great for reducing stress and
even though I don’t think Pickles is stressed out, you never really
know - maybe he’s just good at hiding it. Since I just remembered
about it, I’m going to have to give it a try for the next
while.

[Pickles only likes the walnuts, almonds and
pecans of the nut family and, I don’t know what was wrong with me
one day but he wouldn’t take his night time almond (in the shell)
from my hand after insisting on going to bed and climbing into his
cage so I handed it to him through the bars instead. Now he decided
he wanted it and grabbed the other end but when I went to let go, I
realized it was too big to fit through the bars. Pickles looked a
little confused that it wouldn’t come to him and knew that if he
let go, it would fall to the ground and he wouldn’t have a nut at
all. He was stuck there, beak wide open and clamped to the nut and
eyes looking at me as if to say “
Now
what?”
There was nothing I could do, other than rip if from his beak and
his eyes were pleading for help. He started sliding it up and down
along the bars and honking like a goose but that wasn’t working for
him either. He finally had no choice so he let it go and I promptly
fetched it for him but when I tried to hand it to him, he refused
to take it. I finally had to go get a smaller nut and feed it to
him through the bars.

Poor Pickles. That morning, I prepared his
breakfast of frozen corn by pouring some warm water in the bowl to
thaw it. While it was thawing, I fed and watered Neeka and filled a
bowl of fresh water for Pickles then grabbed the corn and plunked
it in his cage. I went back to the kitchen to make my coffee and
happened to look at Pickles through the livingroom/kitchen divider
window and noticed he was just sitting there looking back at me. I
told him to eat his breakfast and he answered “Now?” I told him
yes, go ahead and eat it but he just stood still. I went to check
if there was a bug in his dish and when I got there, I realized I
hadn’t drained the water. Corn doesn’t float, if it did then
Pickles might have made a nice game of bobbing for corn out if it
but he wasn’t about to stick his face into the water to fetch corn
from the bottom. I apologized, of course, and drained the bowl so
he could eat his breakfast.

At lunch time, I forgot to give him the
mashed potato I’d been promising him and didn’t realize it until
supper time when I noticed it still sitting on the counter and I
hadn’t clued in when he kept asking for it – I just figured he
wanted more. In the afternoon, I tried to hand him the last piece
of Sesame Snap that we had in the house and dropped it on the
floor, much to Neeka’s delight, so he snagged it. And then, when I
tried to make up for it and offered him banana, it was too green
and he wouldn’t eat it.

I had tortured him all day, but I wasn’t
through. As he was eating his almond, I reached above him to turn
off his UV light and somehow managed to knock it over and on to the
cage with a bang. Pickles was startled off his perch and landed
with a hard thud on the bottom of his cage, losing his almond in
the process. He climbed back up to his perch, sat there looking all
put-out and refused to take his almond in any matter. I dropped it
in the dish beside him and he promptly tossed it out and climbed
into his tent to pout.

I’m not done. After he climbed into his tent,
I covered the cage with his sheet and locked the cage door. A few
minutes later, I realized his water bowl was still on the kitchen
counter so I walked back into the livingroom and flipped the sheet
off to open the door. He hadn’t expected that and he shot out of
his tent like a missile out of cannon, landing and clinging to the
bars on the far side of the cage. Just like that. He was here, now
he was there. He gave me a look as if to say,
are
you quite finished now mom? Because I can’t take much more of
this
.

I wasn’t. A little later, I started to wonder
if I’d picked up his little maraca off the bottom of his cage and
put it back in his toy bucket. I was determined not to upset him
again so I tip toed close enough to the cage to inspect the floor
and there it was, his favorite talon toy in the world and the toy
he would eventually get up to play with sometime during the night,
laying there taunting me. Pickles has a hard time carrying it up
the cage bars so he was probably going to have this reminder of
what a cruel mom I am, to stare at all night from his perch
above.]

The other causes could very well be
behavioral. Perhaps we’re missing something but we are pretty good
at giving Pickles lots of attention, toys, foraging, enrichment and
new scenery. Other than the plucking, he is a very well-balanced,
happy bird. But, I will save all the above for other chapters.

We believe that water will be the answer but
I think, in the meantime, what has happened is that something
caused the plucking in the beginning and now it’s become a habit.
One, or a combination of the above things may help in the end but I
think we are now fighting a habit, which in my opinion, means
concentrating even more on enrichment. Again, I’ll speak of that in
other chapters.

“If you're being chased by
your new musical ball and then you notice you're also being chased
by a spider, it doesn't really change anything - just keep
going!”

“
I have a SS toy bucket
that's attached next to a perch in my cage.  Sometimes I
go inside & play with my talon toys one at a time then
toss them to the ground when they start to annoy me.  Half way
thru the bucket I came across this little pink thing mom had
hidden.  "What's THIS?!" I asked mom.  She told me it was
a little piggy and I thought, cool.  I was waving it around
and all of a sudden it caught on fire!  I dropped it, screamed
and ran out of my cage as fast as I could.  Mom picked it up
and it wasn't on fire after all.  Was I hallucinating? 
Then she stuck it in front of my face and it blew up again! 
But just as fast, it was just a cute little piggy. Just when I
thought I was losing it, mom showed me how you press a button and
the piggy lights up.  Way to blow my mind mom.”

“
It's hard to display anger
and maintain your dignity when you throw plastic balls against the
wall and they come back and hit you in the head.”

“
A toy has infiltrated my
cage!  Showed up out of nowhere and was just hanging there
trying to look like it belonged.  I beat on it, pulled on it,
hung upside down on it trying to loosen it's grip from the bars,
screamed at it but it wouldn't leave.  So I had to make it my
prisoner.  I'm interrogating it now, trying to find out the
coordinates of the rest of its troops.  I may have to resort
to water torture.”

“
I woke up screaming and
realized I hadn't fallen asleep yet.  Mom was standing in
front of me with a new toy - an evil toy.  So I crawled inside
my tent and pretended to be sleeping because you can't wake someone
who's pretending to sleep.  After awhile, I peeked outside and
mom was gone so I crawled out of my tent and there I was, face to
face with the evil toy!  I ran from my cage but now it's
holding my other toys hostage and I think I need a hostage
negotiator.”

“
Arguments with toys
are rarely productive.”

“
Sometimes, when I’m talking
to my toys, mom&dad think I’m just babbling but I’m talking
in a foreign language.  So foreign that nobody but me
knows how to speak or understand this language.  This will
come in handy one day if I’m ever abducted by the
enemy.”

“
I think it's a good idea to
always carry around a toy or something in your beak so when people
ask "Hey, can you help me with this?", you can say "No, sorry, my
mouth's full."“

“
If you are having a
birthday party, don't assume that everyone will bring presents -
like toys or bags of walnuts.  Before the party, ask them
first - and ask often.  Cuz otherwise they might be
embarrassed.”

I’m addicted to bird toys and my addiction
has cost me thousands of dollars. I buy them and I make other
people buy them for Christmas or birthday presents for me. I don’t
have kids but now I understand why parents always said “Oh, don’t
worry about me for Christmas, just buy gifts for the kids.” I used
to hate that but now I realize how much fun it is to watch Pickles
play with his presents and that is the best gift anyone could give
me.

I make most of Pickles toys now and I have a
huge chest full of toy parts, along with boxes of parts throughout
the house and garage. Talon toys are the easiest and most
appreciated by Pickles. One of his favorite talon toys is a plain
strip of leather tied into knots for him to untie. I think his very
favorites are his toy maracas – he actually has a couple dozen in
two different sizes.

Sometimes he plays with it right away but
most often, he’ll nap for a while after going to bed then get up
later and take it out of his talon bucket. He likes to shake it up
with one talon and bob his head to its music. He rubs it on his
face and ears and he’ll turn it around and scratch himself with the
handle. He talks to it, coos to it and gives it sweet little
kisses.

Eventually, he goes back to just shaking it
but at some point the maraca starts pissing him off. He acts like
it’s too heavy to hold and it drags his talon way down below the
perch. With an effort, he brings it back up but it’s a fight to
hold on and his leg starts to go spastic which results in some head
bonking, which gets him more pissed. The more pissed he gets, the
more spastic his leg gets and the more he gets bonked in the head.
The screaming starts, the battle heats up until he hurls it in
frustration to the bottom of his cage. If he’s just a little
pissed, it gets tossed in the water bowl below, until he’s rested
and decides he likes it again. If he throws it on the cage floor he
has a hard time getting it back up to a perch, so the lower water
bowl perch is convenient. I don’t often get to see him playing with
the maracas these days because that is his nighttime toy, after
he’s covered.

Musical toys are his favorite and if I hang
them all, which I don’t always do because it’s annoying to listen
to different songs going all at once, he likes to run around
turning them all on at the same time. He picks up the music easily
and copies it right along when he plays them. Usually, the last
thing he does at night is hit the button on his way to the cage for
good dining ambiance while he eats his nighttime almond.

The cheapest stuff is usually the biggest hit
with Pickles and the dollar stores are full of great stuff.
Sometimes I’ll find a package with a set of plastic tools or
plastic musical instruments or other cool things and sometimes I
know before I buy it that there’s only one thing in that package
that Pickles will enjoy but it’s worth it for a buck. The packages
of party favors are often a big hit. It’s also where I get my cheap
tablemats to put on the floor beneath Pickles’ boings and ropes.
It’s much easier to clean those than the floor.

Now bells – Oh My God – bells! I don’t think
he could live without those. They’re very versatile as far as
Pickles’ is concerned and have many purposes. They can be ever so
slightly beak tapped on the outside, they can be hit hard for music
or just if you’re mad and want to make a point, the clapper can be
chewed on, ripped out (on the smaller ones) or just gently tongued.
They can also be hung on, swung on and sometimes even pooped on.
They like to be talked to, sung to and kissed. You can turn them
upside down and cup them in your talon and ding with the beak on
the rim and they make the
bestest
helmets.
Pickles has never met a bell he doesn’t like and no bell can be
passed without pausing for a quick greeting.

Sometimes, if he’s being stubborn and won’t
come over to me, I’ll start playing with a nearby bell and he will
immediately run up to me. Not because he’s jealous and not because
he wants to join in - he comes because I’m having fun the wrong
way. The bell must be confiscated for the purpose of proper
bell-play instruction. He’s perfectly willing to share but only if
you do it his way. He’s very good at sharing both food and toys and
the only time he wants something all to himself and won’t
relinquish, is when he snags something he’s not supposed to
have.