Pickles The Parrot: A Humorous Look At Life With An African Grey

by Abbott, Georgi

  Sorry, I get a little carried away when I start thinking of nature.

  There are 2 people I have to credit for my love of birds. First—my mom. As a kid, I was always interested in birds, along with any sort of animal and creature. When I was young, she taught me to respect animals and wildlife and my parents always allowed us to have pets. My entire life, I kept animals of some sort but at some point I kind of lost touch with nature and the wild and I blame my Grandmother for that. She was a teacher—a very serious and strict one. She lived in Saskatchewan so mom would have all us kids write to her but she always sent my letter back, corrected. She would underline all my spelling and grammar mistakes and put a grade at the top of the page—anything from a ‘D’ to and ‘A’. An ‘A’ grade was accompanied by a star sticker. I found out in later years that she did the same to my mom, even as an adult. As a young teenager, I stopped writing to her because it made me so angry.

  When she came to visit, or if we went to visit her, a lot of our time was spent taking walks. Walks were fine by me but she would insist on stopping to look at every plant, tree, animal or bird and then lecture us with information about it. When we returned home, I was basically given a test on what we had learned that day. She would have collected specimens such as leaves, flowers or branches then produce the items and have us identify them. Soon, I refused to go with walks with her. It was just too much like homework and I got enough of that at school, which I hated.

  One year, we went to visit for a couple of weeks at Christmas time and I thought that was wonderful because I was excused from my school for a whole week. Once there, I was informed that I would be attending her class and I thought it might be cool, something different and I’d be the teacher’s pet since she was my Grandma. Not to be. I was picked on mercilessly. I was asked to answer every question directed to the class, even if others had their hands up. I was chided for not answering correctly and was even shamed by being ordered to stand in a corner. My excuse that I hadn’t learned these things in my class at school wasn’t even considered.

  Many years later, Neil and I took my mom to camp in an RV next to a lake for a couple of weeks. Mom brought her bird identification book and insisted on including me in her page flipping identifications any time a bird was spotted. I was there to relax and just enjoy my surroundings and suddenly, there I was, doing homework again. I tried to humor her but I was seething inside.

  The next time Neil and I went camping, alone, we started noticing birds and wondering what they were. Suddenly I was wishing I had paid attention with mom and started to feel bad about my behavior. I also started regretting that I hadn’t listened to my Grandma because now I wanted to know everything about anything to do with nature. Mom hadn’t forced the bird thing on me; she had just wanted someone to enjoy it with. That one trip with her though, brought nature crashing back to me.

  A few years later, it was Pickles who had credit due. How can you live with a bird and not start appreciating any other kind of bird? You see that they have character and personality and you start to wonder how that applies to wild birds. You start looking at all birds in a different light and appreciating both their similarities and their differences. They stop being just these little creatures flying about.

  Pickles is happy watching nature and our yard is almost as good as the wild. He likes spending time with us outside and there’s always something to observe. The first couple of years, we put him in a cage outside but after awhile it cramped his style so an aviary was built. We have a yard that is just slightly larger than average and we’ve planted over 150 trees and shrubs for wild bird habitat. Over the years, Pickles had developed an incredible repertoire of birdcalls but his favorite bird, and his favorite bird sound is the crow. He gets very excited when they’re around and caws insistently at them. The crows basically ignore him but the chickadees like to visit him now and then.

  Pickles’ sole purpose in life is to abuse people and embarrass me. Pickles outside, is a disaster waiting to happen. One day, Pickles and I are hanging out in the aviary on a warm spring day. Pickles perches above, preening and content in the warm morning sunshine. Our yard is lovely in its semi-wild state and flocks of Evening Grosbeaks are frolicking. Trees and shrubs dot the long, semi-circle perimeter of the yard. People walking by briefly appear and disappear between the foliage due to the gaps of a mere foot or two between the outer border of trees.

  An old man strolls by, lost in thought, appearing here and there between the perimeter trees. As he appears between the first gap in the shrubbery, Pickles spots him and greets him with "Hellooooooo". The man’s startled face glances up just as it’s disappearing behind the next bush. “Hello” says the bush. A moment later the man appears on the other side.

  The old man stops, smiling and ready to engage in neighborly conversation but there’s nobody to be seen in the yard. Looking a little embarrassed, he turns to continue his walk. Now, all this happens in an instant so before I can respond, and as he is disappearing behind the next bush, Pickles inquires “Aren’t cha hungry?”

  “What?” asks the bush. When the man comes out from behind, he doesn’t stop this time. He only slows down while his eyes dart around, desperately looking for the source of the voice. Again, just as he’s walking behind the next bush, Pickles calls out “Doncha want sum breakfast?”

  This time, as the man comes out from behind a bush, I wave and say “Over here!” But he’s picked up his pace. Although he’s looking in the yard, he doesn’t have time to spot me before the next bush, or the one after…or after that…because now he’s practically running. I’m only catching quick glimpses of a scared little old man. He’s gone. High tailed it right on out of there with Pickles screaming after him…“Want some pom pom breakfast?” (pomegranate) “Eat your breakfast!”

  I was standing in the middle of the yard by then and before I can recover from my dismay and embarrassment, a car goes by. Inside are two young men, cruising slowly, arms out the windows, moving to the music. Pickles lets out a loud wolf whistle. I’m praying they don’t hear it over the loud music, but I never seem to have that kind of luck where Pickles is concerned. And sure enough, I hear the car stop and back up. They find a gap in the trees, where they can see me. I’m horrified.

  “Sorry. That was my parrot”, I explain as I point toward the aviary. “Oh” the driver says, “Cool.” But I don’t think they believed me, and you could see the disappointment in their faces that I wasn’t some hot young chick. Then, just as they start to drive away, Pickles hollers “Score!” Oh man…I’m dying here. However, I was thankful that they were out of earshot when Pickles did his loud Bull Frog. It sounds more like flatulence. Thank God for small favors.

  “My God Pickles!” I exclaim, “You are SO embarrassing, I could wring your little neck!”

  “Take your pills.” He said.

  The neighbors get a real kick out of him though and Jeff, from across the street, likes to whistle back and forth with him. Pickles likes it when Jeff copies everything he does and Pickles tries to trip him up. Sometimes it works and we hear Jeff say “Well, you got me there. I can’t do that.” Jeff’s a good whistler so Pickles also likes to try and copy him. That’s good because I don’t whistle all that well, Neil can’t whistle at all so Pickles has to rely on TV and making up his own tunes, which he is very good at.

  Our neighbor Dave, right next door, sometimes gets the brunt of Pickles cruelness. Dave was painting his back porch one day and Pickles’ play stand is next to the window, overlooking Dave’s back yard, so Pickles made the sound of a phone ringing through the open (but screened) window. Dave dropped everything and ran in the house to answer his phone. A minute later, he returned and Pickles rang the phone again. Dave obliged Pickles by running back in the house. Several rings later, Dave finally noticed Pickles and realized he’d been duped.

  Pickles doesn’t fool us too often anymore because we realized he needs to answer his own phone. He has the spacing between rings perfect but after 2
or 3 rings, he can’t help but go “Beep. Hello?” So, we wait. He also physically pretends to pick up the receiver. He raises his little talon up to his ear as he says “Hello?” and has his own little conversation. “Uhuh. Okay. Uhuh. Okay then, bye-bye.” Then he lowers his talon, effectively hanging up the receiver.

  Dave had a collie over for a play date with his golden retriever and Pickles got a kick out of watching them play. As the dogs were play fighting, Pickles would bark and all play would stop while the dogs looked around for the intruder. Unable to find the culprit, they continued with their play. Pickles continued this game until I thought the poor dogs would go mad.

  We spend a lot of time in our yard and wanted to add a water feature to attract more birds so we decided to build a pond. Our trout permit finally arrived from the Ministry of Environment so we bought fish and released them into their new home. We took Pickles out to the aviary for his supper and settled next to the pond in lawn chairs to observe our trout.

  Everything was going just fine—Pickles went on and on about his supper. “Supper in the aviary. Mmmmmmm. What a good supper. Mmmmmmm.”

  Two young girls, about 16 years old, walked down the side of the road about 25 feet from Pickles. Naturally, Pickles feels required to act neighborly. His hellos draw no response and he takes rejection personal so he resorts to loud whistling. The girls glance around but keeping walking. As I mentioned earlier, the aviary is sort of hidden and it’s difficult to see an African Gray in an 8X8 structure of branches through our yard foliage.

  Whistling obviously wasn’t good enough so he hollers out “Gimme kiss!” which makes the girls giggle uncomfortably since all they could see was Neil and I sitting pond side. They continued on their way and I thought nothing of it until Neil said that they might have thought it was he talking to them since Pickles speaks in Neil’s voice most times. I began to cringe out of embarrassment but tried to put it out of my mind and watch the fish.

  A few minutes later, the girls came back. I was just heading into the house but stopped, figuring I’d set this right so I called out “Did you hear him say he wanted a kiss?” pointing at the corner of the aviary where Pickles sat, quiet for once.

  One of the girls glanced over at me with a mixed look of disgust, shock, and horror. I was appalled to be on the receiving end of such a look.

  “It was the parrot asking for a kiss!” I called out again but the girls had their heads together, talking and hurrying away. They didn’t hear me.

  “Way to go” Neil said. “You told them it was HIM and pointed in the general direction of both of us. They think you were talking about me!”

  I replayed it in my mind and yup, that’s exactly the way it would have looked. Now they think I’m some weird old lady that wants them to kiss some lecherous old man. Sometimes I think about buying Pickles a muzzle.

  We spend as much time as possible, sitting around the pond. It’s about 20 feet long, 16 feet wide with waterfall and rocky shoal gradually sloping to its 5-foot depth. The waterfall, fed through the pump in the deepest end, helps provide aeration and filtration.

  You can’t help but fixate on the waterfall, the water gracefully cascading down the rocks and navigating the short creek until tapering elegantly into the shallows, where little trout sit in anticipation of drifting food. The pleasing tone of a babbling brook is utterly mesmerizing and transcending.

  Rocks of all sizes are handpicked for their unique color or shape and placed along the perimeter of the pond. Thyme, yarrow and wildflowers creep through the rocks and naturally envelope the pond while the trees reflect their colorful foliage on the glassy surface below. Unsuspecting insects land on the water and fish rise for the offering. As the fish are dining, the waterfall and shoal are alive with birds of all sizes taking their evening bath. And all the while, the songbirds in the trees are in perfect harmony with the silvery song of the brook. Now and then, Pickles notices a fish take an insect off the surface and will alert us with “Fishy eat a bug!”

  Our yard is a jungle with trees, shrubs, vegetable garden and even a couple of piles of discarded tree prunings. We continue piling on to them as this makes great bird habitat, providing shelter, nesting and foraging. There are little benches or seats tucked into sheltered areas and a trail system is slowly developing as foliage grows and we add more trees or shrubs.

  We stopped using poisons in our yard about 12 years ago. The birds thank us, and so do the dandelions. To be perfectly honest, I like dandelions and I think they got a bad rep as a weed. We’ve found that most weeds have beneficial properties, from medicinal to edible so we don’t sweat it—we use what we grow, or it’s put in the trusty composter.

  I don’t think our neighbors are pleased with us. We let our grass grow, we have dandelions, I think we play our music too loud, they’re leery of the bat boxes and they assume our pond breeds mosquitoes. We’ve tried to tell them, if you let your grass grow, you don’t have to water so much and it will eventually choke out the dandelions. Bats are good. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t attack hair and they eat the mosquitoes. The fish are the best thing to happen to the neighborhood because the water attracts the little blood suckers, providing meals for the fish. The mosquitoes can’t breed in the pond because it’s too deep and too fast. As for the loud music, well, we keep working on that.

  We spent a lot of time camping and fishing most of our lives but after spending so much time watching our fish, it’s difficult for us now. In the early days of fishing, we killed them for food. I’m not comfortable killing anything but it’s either that, or buy it in a can. A fish is going to die, one way or another when I’m in the mood to eat fish. In later years, we became catch & release fishermen as conservation started to demand. I was never quite comfortable with that, it just didn’t see right to go and stress a fish out for our own pleasure. Now, after getting to know our fish, we realize that they possess little personalities and that they’re not just some dumb creatures beneath the sea. We will continue to fish, but rarely, and we seek other species of fish for table fare.

  We rarely feel the need to go camping and wildlife watching because we have just as much nature in our own back yard. Sometimes we ‘pretend fish’. We both pick a fly that’s landed on the water and see whose is eaten first. It’s just as fun as real fishing; the only difference is that the fly is not attached to the end of a line.

  The yard and pond is a constant source of entertainment and it illustrates the importance of every single creature, and the fact that they all have personalities, intelligence and adventurous lives. There was a blue dragonfly that came to visit the pond every day for a few weeks, hovering or flitting around the pond, catching midges that were hatching from the water. One day, a green dragonfly appeared and you could literally see the excitement from both of them upon discovering each other. The entered into a lovely, graceful aerial dance, then a game of tag and at one point one of them managed to hide behind the reeds. I watched him hover in one spot, only turning slightly now and then to watch the other through the reed blades. After a minute or so, the other one thought to come around the plant and the moment she discovered him, they both danced in the air with glee. Imagine, bugs playing hide-and-go-seek!

  Fish themselves are reduced to a commodity and we just see them as a massive lump in a seine net or food in a can but each fish had an adventurous life before that. They also have friends. The other day, I watched one of our trout holding next to a plant in the shallows while he let 3 different fish into the area, to swim, hunt and even nudge him but the minute one particular fish attempted to swim by; he dashed after him and refused to let him in the area. They obviously make distinctions between friends and foes.

  The yard is our sanctuary and it’s a wonderful distraction for Pickles. It is peaceful, yet alive. Because we spend all our time out there, all visitors are dragged out with us. So, when my mom came to visit one spring, we all spent a lot of time in the yard.

  Her grandchildren call my mother, who by now i
s Pickles’ biggest fan, “Nana” but Pickles prefers to call her “Nana Banana”. She has a hard time concentrating on anything else but Pickles while she’s here and especially loves it when Pickles is chatting to invisible characters in his Fun Factory. This is a plastic globe that hangs from the ceiling with holes in the side for climbing in and out. She likes to relax and read while here but I’m sure she only succeeds in reading the same page over and over because mostly I see her looking over the top of her book at Pickles.

  Pickles likes my mom but back then they didn’t get too close ever since she showed up one time in her coat of many colors—mostly reds. It was “scary” as Pickles would tell you, and for while he was a little leery of getting too close to Mom in case that coat may still be hidden upon her person. Mom sometimes animates with her arms and hands while telling a story, so that too can be “scary” when you’re half asleep and sitting on the knee of the animator. Regardless, he’s always happy to see her and doesn’t hesitate to chat it up with her. She even started to call before her visits, to discuss her wardrobe…“Does Pickles like orange? Can I wear my flowered pajamas? What about hats?” Etc.

  Mom wrote a cute poem in Pickles’ Christmas card one year, entitled The Pickles Bird’s Christmas Present…

  What a nice song” you could hear people say,

  From the first thing Christmas morning, til the end of the day.

  And the Pickles Bird sat on the bells and the horns

  And he bobblebird danced all Christmas morn.

  “See the present! Oh my! Must we wait to begin it?”

  Cause he knew it was his—whatever was in it.

  So the Pickles Bird pulled and the Pickles Bird tugged