Color doesn’t seem to matter whatsoever. He ripped a toy to pieces one time and rather than stringing the same bright colored beads and baubles back on, I strung plain wooden ones. He proceeded to destroy it just the same. Let’s face it, colored toys are meant to catch our eyes, not the bird’s. The same as fancy colored lures attract fishermen, not fish. Catching our eye, clinches the sale. Colored toys don’t usually scare him but sometimes a toy of some sort will. Usually, it’s the shape or size or something that’s attached to it that might be scary to him. If we think that might be so with a new toy, we will play with it on the couch first and then he’ll want in on the action. If I’m making a big toy and I think that it might scare him, I put it all together on the couch – usually with him helping with the small pieces – so when it’s put together, it was gradual and he was part of the process as it grew into something big.
He was helping mama make a toy on the couch one day – testing bells, tangling rope and tossing toy parts – and he dropped a piece between the wide gap between two cushions that was caused from me sitting on one of them. At the time, it was a great tunnel to dive in to retrieve the toy part – and he did – but at the same moment, I stood up to fetch a piece that he had thrown which caused the cushions to snap shut and trap him. I heard a squawk and turned to see nothing but his little head sticking out. I rescued him by sitting back down on the cushion to recreate the cool tunnel and to allow space for him to jump back out.
Once out, he realized he still wanted the piece that he left in the tunnel and completely forgetting that the tunnel also doubled as a steel trap, he dove right back in to play with it. I was feeling a little frisky so I stood up again, but slower this time so as not to startle him as much as the first time. He tried to jump back out as the walls were closing in but didn’t quite make it and ended up pinched between the cushions again. “Dadddeeee” he cried, ratting me out. I told him daddy wasn’t home to rescue him. “Daddy be right back!” he threatened. I lead him to believe his threat had convinced me to release him, and release him I did by sitting back down on the cushion. He sprung out of the tunnel, jumped on my knee, ran up my arm and shouted in my ear, “You go home!” I don’t know where he thinks my ‘home’ is but I just answered, “Sucks to be you, eh?”
One of the best investments we ever made was the stainless steel talon bucket. It came with a handle for hanging but we were concerned that he might get stuck between the handle and the bucket so we took it off and screwed it into the side of the cage in front of his favorite perch. Each night we pick up everything he dropped and put it back in the bucket and we change it up every few days. It keeps him very busy at night before he goes to bed and gives him something to do if he gets up in the middle of the night.
Pickles’ quote, at the beginning of this chapter, was funny to watch. I had found this cute little pink rubber piggy flashlight key chain, removed the chain and tossed it in the bucket for him to find later – he loves digging for surprises. Later, when he climbed in his cage to go through his treasures, I watched as he discovered it and said, “What’s THIS?” and backed up to his perch to play with this delightful little item. He chewed on it, rubbed it on his face and waved it in the air with glee but at some point he chewed on the little button and it flashed in his face! I hadn’t expected it to scare him, but it did. It flew from his talon as he flew from his cage and he stood on the top bars, head cocked, peering at the culprit lying on the paper below. He wouldn’t go back in his cage until I removed it but I still sneak it into his bucket now and then just to watch him throw it out in disgust. It’s never scared him since the first time but they are still mortal enemies.
He seldom empties the whole bucket of all the toys because he likes to play with each and every one of them, and there are dozens of things in there – anything from pieces of leather, to beads and buttons and regular talon toys. But when he does empty it, he likes to sit on the rim and use it as an echo chamber.
One evening, it was as if he had decided that was the only thing he wanted to do. He tossed the toys, helter skelter, at record speed until the bucket was completely cleared out. He sat on the edge and all I could see was his twinker up in the air as he banged the sides with his beak and made any sound he could think of that might make a good echo. This went on for quite some time until he let go a loud scream – that African Grey ear-piercing shriek. Immediately, he went completely still and quiet – head still in the bucket, twinker still in the air. After I moment I asked him if he was okay. “Huh?” he asked from inside. “Did you break an ear drum Pickles?” I asked. “Huh?” came again, from the bucket. Then I guess ‘huh’ started to make a good echo and he just carried on saying it, “Huh? Huh. Huh? Huh. Huh? Huh.” - either that, or he really was trying to hear himself through the ringing in his ears.
I’m pretty good at strategically placing his toys and perches so that neither gets pooped on much however, when he plays with his bucket of toys, some of them get dropped below and pooped on over night and in the morning, the poopy ones get thrown in a nearby basket to clean once it’s full. At one point, I got a little behind in washing them and the basket got full so I was putting them in a plastic bag next to the basket. Pickles decided he really wanted to inspect the bag so he climbed down from his cage and headed over while Neil was watching TV. Neil didn’t notice until Pickles started rustling around and told him to get back up! Pickles dropped it, reluctantly, and headed back up his cage but the moment he noticed Daddy was preoccupied; he headed back to the bag. Once again, the rustling alerted Neil who told him again to get back up! “Daddy bad” said Pickles as he fluffed up to pout on top of his cage, but he stayed put after that.
After awhile, Neil went to the kitchen to make coffee and when he returned to the livingroom, he found that Pickles had dragged the bag to the middle of the floor and had the toys scattered all over the carpet. “Pickles! No!” Neil told him “Get back on your cage”. Pickles didn’t head for his cage this time, instead, he ran after Neil’s hand as Neil was picking up the toys and yelled “No. No. No.” at each toy that went back in the bag and tried to grab them before Neil could. Neil’s yelling ‘No’ while Pickles is yelling ‘No’ and they’re both fighting over the toys.
Pickles finally resorted to grabbing the bag and hanging on to the bottom of it while yelling at Daddy as Daddy’s filling it up. Neil finishes inserting all the toys but Pickles ain’t letting go of that bag and he ain’t gonna step up on Neil’s hand. He just clung to the bag, refusing to relinquish, so Neil plunked the bag down on the floor with Pickles beneath, upside down. Still, Pickles clung to it.
The staring contest began. Each glaring at the other; waiting for the other to concede. Pickles gave up first but not without a fight. He jumped out from under the bag and right on top of it. Finally, Neil had to get the snack bowl of pine nuts to bribe him off and as Pickles went for the snacks, Neil picked up the bag. After Pickles had a couple of snacks, Neil told him to get back up and at first, Pickles just stood at Neil’s feet looking up, waaay up, wings splayed, glaring at Neil but finally stomped over to his cage and climbed back up to the top to pout again. “Neil” he said with disappointment and Neil seemed to think he even shook his head slowly in disgust. I wouldn’t doubt it.
Almost every toy comes with a warning about not leaving birds unattended with them. Whether you buy or make a toy, there are always risks with any of them. It’s a hard rule to follow. I mean, why do we buy our birds toys? Because everything we’ve learned is about the importance of playing, chewing for beak conditioning, foraging, enrichment – everything to keep a bird from getting bored and maintaining good mental health. And when are most birds bored? They’re bored when they don’t have toys or stuff to chew on, they’re not getting attention or we’re not around to entertain them.
There’s almost always somebody home with Pickles but what about people who work, or go out a lot? What if you have to leave the room? Are we going to remove every single toy each time? For us, that would be a major job b
oth coming and going – especially since Pickles is not caged when we leave. It just can’t be done with us. We know the risks and try to make everything as safe as possible – cutting off loose strings and threads, making sure ropes and chains aren’t long enough to strangle himself, and always checking chain links to make sure they’re tight enough so they don’t catch a nail or beak tip. And still, sometimes things can happen.
In nine years, Pickles has only once been in danger with a toy. We were sitting on the couch when Pickles started screaming and we immediately jumped up to see what was wrong. It was difficult to tell because he was half holding on to the bars at the top of his cage and half holding on to a hanging toy. Neil put his hands in to cup him and keep him from flailing around and ended up getting some nasty bites until he could manage to unfasten the toy from the bars and pull them both out together. By the time he got Pickles out, he and the toy had separated – if in fact, they ever were stuck together. We don’t know what happened but we tightened everything up anyway. I don’t know what would have happened if we weren’t home; he might have been seriously injured, or he may have got loose on his own. Maybe he wasn’t even stuck, perhaps he was just playing and we mistook the screams for fright. So yes, we are always aware and concerned but there’s only so much you can do. Its like having kids – it’s impossible to protect them at all times.
When it comes right down to it, toys aren’t all that important to Pickles – other than his talon toys at night and his bells – as he ages, his toy playing becomes more and more infrequent. Nowadays, he prefers hanging out on ropes, swings, boings or his fun factory.
Chapter 7
Just Hangin’ Around
“When you get a new branch on your playstand, make sure there's room for a Flap & Flip all the way around it. Otherwise it's just called a Face Plant.”
“When mommy leaves me on the kitchen counter and says "Be right back", then she should be right back. If she isn't, she shouldn't be surprised to find her yucky cookie in the soapy dish water.”
“I had to help mommy with the laundry. Chores, chores, chores. There was a pile of dirty laundry on the table next to the chest freezer where I was supervising. When she had her back turned, I sorted it for her and punctured nice little decorative holes in some of the towels. My work here is done.”
“I was hanging upside down on my perch and I thought whoa, what if the blood all rushed to my head and poked a hole through the top and started oozing out. And then when I stood up, the top of my head would be red like my tail. And then mom would walk in and say 'hey,cool'.”
“I love my boing, boing, boing, boing. The wall hates it when I swing on it though, cuz it hits me when I go too crazy. I think it's just jealous.”
“Daddy should save his beard & mustache for me whenever he shaves it off. I'm going to market them as preening items for birds. And then, we can stick food in them, just like daddy does.”
“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 h
amster 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.
Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain Page 7