Beat egg. Add all ingredients except for flour and mix. Add flour. Depending on the juice in the raspberries, ripeness of bananas and consistency of yogurt, you may need to add a bit more flour to a nice, doughy consistency.
Pour into lightly greased & floured cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, or until edges start to brown.
Autumn Melody
The following is Pickles' favorite birdie bread. It can only be made in the fall and most of the ingredients are found in our yard. You can easily substitute items that are not available to you but cotoneaster berries, mountain ash berries, wild rose hips (or domestic) can usually be found Just about anywhere - in the wild or in your neighbor's yards. Just make sure pesticides haven't been used. And don't worry about picking out every single small twig or leaf, otherwise it's very finicky work and not necessary. Make sure to save the pumpkin seeds from the fresh pumpkin - you will be adding them to the bread but save the rest to feed to your bird over the next few days.
All the ingredients are beneficial to health, and rose hips and mountain ash berries are rich in vitamin C.
This makes a fairly large batch, 9 X 11 pan, and you want it to be almost of bread dough consistency. Depending on the ingredients you substitute, you may need to add more water or more flour for proper consistency.
1/2 cup chopped pumpkin (birdie bite size)
1 cup steamed & mashed pumpkin
1/2 cup cotoneaster berries
1/2 cup rose hips
1 cup mountain ash berries
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (reserved from fresh pumpkin)
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds & juice ( or 1 small)
4 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup grape juice
1 1/2 cup water
(optional - cloves, if your bird likes them, Pickles doesn't)
Mix the berries, seeds and chopped pumpkin with the mashed pumpkin. Add flour, mix well. Add juice and water and stir until doughy consistency. Place in 9 X 11 cake pan, lightly greased with canola oil. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes.
Pip PipCheerios
1/8 cup of cheerios
1/8 cup of grape nuts
1/8 cup of chex
1/8 cup of brown or cane sugar
1 cup of soy milk or juice
(substitute any of the cereal if you like)
Extra cheerios for topping – 1 per cookie
1/4 cup of chopped almonds
¼ cup of pecans
¼ cup of pinenuts
(substitute any of the nuts if you like)
¼ cup peanut butter (or other nut butter)
¼ cup corn meal (or other flour)
1 tsp each of sesame seeds
1 tsp of canola oil
1 beaten egg
Mix all ingredients together. At this point the mixture should be a little wet so you want to leave it for about 10 minutes for the Cheerios to soak. After that, it should be almost crumbly in texture. If too wet, add more cornflour or other flour.
Drop by teaspoon onto baking sheet and push one whole dry cheerio into the centre of each cookie.
Bake at 350 for 7 to 10 minutes, or until starting to brown on edges. Should make about 50 cookies.
Sweet Potato Burrito
Bake or microwave one sweet potato – poke holes in it first. Peel the potato after it is cooked, or scoop out the flesh. Mash the potato with just enough fresh juice to make a paste.
Use a rolling pin to flatten some 12-grain slice of bread (or whole wheat, or whatever you like to use) then spread the potato paste on the bread.
Cut the bread slices into strips anywhere from 1 to 2 inches wide. Roll the strips up tightly and voila!
Chapter 4
Dogs Are Chumps
“I decided I wanted a grass hut but then I thought - no, because my dog would eat it to keep from puking. So I decided a mud hut would be better.”
“I dreamed that I ran up and kicked my little dog, Neeka, in the butt and my foot got stuck and he dragged me round and round the yard. I was scared but when I woke up, I realized how stupid my dream was cuz I'd never kick my dog in the butt. I'd bite him.”
“Neeka the dog was sneezin' his nose. He looked like some kinda cartoon dog, he's so funny. He couldn't stop so I got right down on the bottom of my playstand for a front row seat. I was laughing and laughing until all the sneezing and laughing got mom's attention and she came in the room. That's when the fun ended.”
“Neeka thinks food grows out of the kitchen tiles when mom or dad is cooking. He sits there staring at the floor, just waiting for something to pop up. Dumb dog. Everybody knows food grows out of bowls.”
“Okay mom, so you don't like it when I toss your pork chop on the carpet. The dog and I don't mind eating off the floor, why should you?”
“I called my dog, Neeka, over & asked him if he wanted to go for a walk. He just looked at me, being the chump he is, so I climbed down from the cage and walked out of the room saying "Let's go. Let's go for a walk." But when I turned around he was still sitting there. I came back and said "Doncha wanna go for a walk?" but he didn't answer. Then I remembered. He doesn't understand going for a walk cuz before he came to live with us, mom always said that to me and she didn't want him to learn it otherwise every time she would ask me to go for a walk around the house, he would get excited and think he was going outside. So, I think we should come up with a term for Neeka to understand going for a walk. I suggested "Let's go shove a stick up your nose! C'mon boy! Let's go!" But I haven't noticed mom using that yet.”
“If you were forced to eat dog food, it wouldn't be so bad. Not unless the dog had leprosy or something.”
“What about, instead of mouse traps, we have dog traps? Not to hurt them or anything, but just to hold them down long enough to chew up their toys.”
“I'm going to get a Seeing Eye Skunk. A Seeing Eye Dog would be okay but people would really get out of the way for a Seeing Eye Skunk.”
“I tell mom or dad to 'tell me a story' and when they do, they put their lips up to my ears and talk. I go into a daze from the vibrations and warmth of their breath. I like the vibrations on my beak too so sometimes I tell them 'talk to the beak'. My little dog Neeka is like that too, he likes his ear talked to. Not by me though.”
Neeka and Pickles are quite the characters together. While they don’t interact physically, they are very attuned to each other. It’s really quite comical watching both dog and bird when something scares one or the other. They both react to each other’s frights and they’re both pretty darn sure that, even though something didn’t initially scare one of them, the other must know something that they don’t.
When Neeka was a little pup, I brought home a new ball for him to play with – one of those colorful, smaller sized beach balls – and the moment he saw it in my hand, he was leaping like a little kangaroo in his excitement to get at it. I wasn’t thinking of the crazy colors on the ball as I threw it from the kitchen doorway and into the livingroom. Neeka, in his frenzy to go after it, made about half a dozen attempts to pursue it from the kitchen tile, looking all the while like a cartoon dog running a mile a minute in the same spot. The only thing missing was the music of the beating tin drum in the background. He finally managed to bolt after it but the scuffling, bolting and sudden appearance of a large kaleidoscopic colored sphere appearing out of nowhere almost gave Pickles a coronary.
As Neeka ran after the ball, Pickles came unhinged and flew screaming around the room causing Neeka to do an about-face and run, terrorized, out of the room. I’m killing myself laughing about it as I type this. I can’t help it; I’m the type of person who laughs at serious accidents. I don’t mean to, it’s just a knee-jerk reaction for me.
I once watched a good friend get hit by a car and I barely had the strength to help her off the ground from laughing so hard. Don’t get me wrong, somewhere in the back of my head, I was horrified and extremely concerned about her but I could also tell that she wasn’t dead or anything since she was
moving and the car hadn’t been going all that fast. She was furious with me at first but my laughing was contagious and soon she was laughing through her tears, right along with me. She did have a sore hip where she was struck and a couple of bruises and scrapes but I think the laughter got her through the pain briefly – I’d like to think so anyway.
So, suddenly, here was a ball – the best toys EVER – and Pickles had convinced Neeka that this particular ball was sheer evil and it took some time before Neeka would trust it again.
It works both ways. Pickles loves brooms but one day Pickles was on his boings in the kitchen, Neeka was laying on a mat chewing a rawhide and I walked into the room, broom in hand. Pickles spotted it first, got all bright eyed and scampered to get closer just as Neeka noticed it and jumped to his feet, hackles up and barking frantically. This frightened Pickles but in his mind, the broom had instantly become the scary thing in the room. He ran like a tightrope walker across his ropes, toward Neeka and away from the broom. The whole time I swept the room, Neeka barked and Pickles squawked at the intruder. Pickles has since gotten over it and likes the broom again but Neeka continues to despise it.
I was taking Pickles for one of his daily walks around the house, carrying him around on my hand, when I walked through a sticky patch of the kitchen floor. Neil and I were having a few drinks the night before and my rum and pepsi got spilled and obviously not wiped up good enough. I was wearing my flip flop slippers and one of them kind of stuck to the tiles, making a loud ripping sound as I lifted my foot. It scared the bejeezus out of Pickles and between the rip sound and Pickles' sudden flapping, it scared the bejeezus out of Neeka. And between the rip, the flap and the sudden scurrying dog, it scared the bejeezus out of me! I lost my balance, tripped over the dog, Pickles fell off my hand and onto the dog and the dog ran one way while Pickles flew the other and I was left standing there, dogless and birdless with no idea where either of them got to. I went searching for Pickles thinking Man, I really otta pick up a mop now and then.
I should insert a little background on Neeka here. I mentioned some of this in my last book but I’ll do a quick recap. We got Neeka when he was 8 weeks old and could easily fit in the palm of my hand. He was neutered but it’s taken about 3 years for him to figure that out, much to the chagrin of all his defenseless stuffy toys. He’s a rust colored Min Pin (Miniature Pinscher – no relation to the Doberman) with some black markings on his face. He’s of sweet temperament, smart, obedient, aims to please but timid around new people or dogs until he gets to know them. He’s playful and is happy to amuse himself with the billions of toys we’ve bought him over the years but given the choice, he’d rather be glommed to me every minute of the day. He’s never been destructive in the least and from day one we could leave him alone in the house with no fear of him getting into anything. The only thing he insists on destroying, are certain stuffy toys - he’s obsessed with ripping the stuffing out of them and scattering it all over the house.
Sheesh, I remember the old days of raising dogs, when dogs were given a toy or two and other than that you just threw a ball or stick for them now and then. They were expected to behave and not get bored or get into things, to just behave and be good. Poor things. Since having a parrot, learning about behavior and positive reinforcement, I’ve learned to apply all that to dogs.
I buy a lot of toys but I also come up with ideas of my own for his amusement. It drives me crazy, especially when watching TV, but he likes it when I put beads in a plastic pop bottle for him to chase, chew on and shake like a dead rat. That will amuse him indefinitely. I will also take a bottle, without the lid, and put small pieces of cookies inside for Neeka to roll around in hopes of something falling out. Narrower shaped bottles are best for this, as they don’t fall out as easy when Neeka steps on the bottleneck. He will roll it or bang it around and then spend a minute checking every inch of ground for something that might have fallen out, then it’s back to attacking the bottle. I save old peanut butter jars – the smaller ones, because he’s so small – and give them to him to lick whatever’s left. I save the jar to smear more peanut butter whenever I want to give him a treat.
Like many dogs, he loves his squeaky toys and Pickles can copy the sound of each and every one, which drives Neeka into a frenzy sometimes because he thinks someone has stolen his precious toys. Pickles gets a kick out of tormenting Neeka and making him run around the house looking for the squeaky toy. If Neeka looks toward Pickles for the sound, Pickles will stop as if to say – nope, you’re getting cold. If Neeka thinks I’ve got it, all I have to do is hold up my empty hands and he’s off searching elsewhere. I can’t be sure, but I think Pickles has picked up on this. Twice, recently, I’ve watched Pickles torment Neeka and when Neeka came and stood below, staring up at Pickles to see if he had his toy, Pickles raised his wings to the side as if to indicate that his hands were empty and it was nowhere upon is person.
At the time of this writing, he’s almost 3 years old and still weighs 6 pounds. He’s long, lean, and spry, and his vet says he’s the healthiest Min Pin she’s ever seen, as most Min Pins are prone to obesity. Neeka free-feeds, there’s always a good quality dry dog food available to him. Neil spent a lot of time researching dry dog food – the ingredients, nutrition, the pros and cons of some of the ingredients and how to read the labels so you know if you’re getting the proper amounts of everything – and he came to the conclusion that California Naturals is best. Expensive, but worth it. Actually, it’s not expensive when you consider the fact that it’s more nutritious so you feed much less.
He gets dog cookies, and I make some of them myself, but he gets no people food. Well, once or twice a month I might give him a mouthful or two of leftover meat, potato or gravy but he never expects food, begs for it or stares at us in anticipation. Although, sometimes he’ll stare at us when we’re eating but only because he’s impatient for us to finish. The minute we set aside our plates, he steals a lap. He likes many kinds of vegetables and will scrounge around Pickles’ cage for his fill of them. I recently found out that grapes could be toxic to dogs so now we have to be careful when we give one to Pickles, in case he drops it.
Neeka was so tiny when we first got him that he was unable to go through the existing dog door or go up and down stairs and since we couldn’t always be home with him to take him outside for his potties, we set up a litter box for him. We had puppy-training pads on the bottom and a piece of carpet above that – we bought cheap little mats so we could change them often. We were a little concerned that he’d start thinking that all carpet was to be peed on but that didn’t happen, he knew he had to do his business in the box. He utilized the litter box all fall and winter and once the weather got nice, he started using it less and less – preferring to go outside on his own. By mid-summer, we removed the box completely.
In my first book, I talked about Neeka’s obsession with his dick. He’s stopped humping all his toys for the most part but he still checks with, and blames his dick for everything. If he is reprimanded for anything, he immediately pokes his dick with his nose as if the dick gave him some bad advice and got him into trouble. If he’s not sure about something, say a new food item, he pokes the dick to see what the dick thinks before he tries it. I have no idea what that’s all about but it’s pretty cute as far as Dick Poking business goes.
We’ve had to come up with some different phrasing or words so that Pickles or Neeka don’t get excited about something you’re offering to the other. Pickles’ treats are called ‘snacks’ and Neeka’s treats are called ‘cookies’. Pickles gets a lot of snacks throughout the day and it would be torture for Neeka if we used a word that he associated with food and he didn’t get any. So we can offer Neeka a cookie without Pickles demanding a treat because he detests dog cookies. We’ve always taken Pickles for ‘walks’, whether it’s outside in his backpack or just a walk around the house on our hand so when we got Neeka, we knew that if he understood ‘go for a walk’, he’d go nuts every time we as
ked Pickles – which is fairly often during the course of the day. So, for Neeka, going for a walk is going ‘outside’.
Neeka’s always sniffing around the floor beneath Pickles’ cage and playstands so he sometimes gets a small fluffy feather up his nose, which can cause a sneezing fit. Once again, he looks like a character in a cartoon as he sneezes one after another, after another. His head shakes violently, his lips flap with each shake, the cartoon sound escapes his lips and with each sneeze, his front feet come clear off the floor. It’s hard to explain but it doesn’t matter – Pickles thinks this is the most hilarious thing in the world. He gets as close to Neeka as possible and laughs so hard you expect tears to roll down his cheeks. One time, after Neeka gained control of himself, Pickles let out a disappointed “Ohhhhh” and told Neeka to “Stop it”. What I think he meant was, don’t stop it but because we never tell Pickles ‘don’t stop it’, so he doesn’t know how to explain that to Neeka.
Speaking of telling them to ‘stop it’, each one knows the difference when the other is being reprimanded. Neither one will stop what they’re doing, or look up to find out what they’re doing wrong when the other is being scolded. Same thing if we say ‘bad!’
Neeka has no interest in playing with Pickles, Pickles is just some strange creature that talks and throws food for him. If they’re ever on the floor, or the back of the couch together, Neeka keeps his distance. If Pickles tries to get too close, Neeka will move to keep, what he deems, is a respectable, safe distance away from that beak. He’s never been bitten but he seems to respect the power of the beak. Pickles, on the other hand, would love to play with Neeka but Pickles tends to be too beaky and could easily hurt Neeka. But they like each other and are attentive to each other. I think either one would be lonely without the other.
Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain Page 4
