Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain

by Abbott, Georgi

  My friend wanted to talk to Pickles though so I had her cover her shirt with a jacket and eventually Pickles noticed and ventured out of the cabin. “Go home scary” he said quietly. He might have been telling my friend to go home but I told her that he thought the ‘scary’ thing had gone home which thrilled her to not only hear Pickles talk, but that he said something that made sense to her.

  And, of course, there’s Pickles’ ‘mock terror’. He loves this. He’ll pretend something is scary and start flapping his wings, screaming bloody murder as he rises up with elongated neck swaying like a cobra, as if something’s terrorizing him. He does this all for my benefit because when he finally stops, he’ll look at me and burst out laughing as he runs around his cage laughing and bobbing his head. He’ll stop suddenly, peer intently into my face and say “Scary” then burst out laughing and carry on running around the cage.

  So, you never know with Pickles. One day you can walk in with a box and he assumes I ordered new toys or food items for him and the next day a box will scare the poop out of him. Most new things he takes in stride but when we least expect it, it scares him.

  Chapter 14

  Fying The Coop

  “The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going. But for the parrot who knows where he's going, everybody just says "What the hell are you doing on the floor?? You get back up!!!" I know where I'm going, I just can't always get there.”

  “I think it would be really funny to go for a fly and land in a pot of chili. No wait - I think I got funny and painful mixed up.”

  “I got bored and decided to go for a walk in the house. I got half way down the hall and then I thought - I wonder if this is really half way? So I found dad's measuring tape and measured it. I wasn't half way after all but it was close enough.”

  “If I went for a walk in the forest, I bet all the wild birds would tease me for walking instead of flying. But I wouldn't care. I'd say - Oh yeah? And they'd say - "Yeah!" And I still wouldn't care, I’d just keep walking until me feet got sore.”

  “What is failing? How can you fail if you're like me and never know what you're doing in the first place? Like, if I’m walking along my tree branches - do, de do, de do - and suddenly I trip and fall - I end up flying! Woo hoo! And then I fly right into a wall and end up in a sink full of dirty dishes and soapy water and I almost drown. Oh ... I see ... never mind.”

  “If you were to fly to the moon, I bet you could pick up some pretty cool junk floating around along the way. You might even find those Russian dogs that were lost in space in the 1960's. I bet they'd be really happy to see all the new kinds of toys people have come up with for dogs since then.”

  “You people should choose your words carefully. Humans keep too many words in them, which makes them too heavy to fly.”

  “If I went for a walk in the forest and found a dead squirrel, I’d feel sorry for him but I’d also wonder how he tastes.”

  “When I flew into that window, mom said it was a miracle that I didn't break my neck. I think it's a miracle that air can get so hard.”

  “Walking is good for your feet and legs. Plus it makes the ground feel needed.”

  “Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead but if I do, I’ll leave a poop trail. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow but if I do, I’ll nip your butt. Do not walk beside me either, just let me alone pick at things on the ground.”

  “I started walking with a limp. I'm hoping mom will give me one of the candy canes that are hanging on the tree. I'd be like, one step - one bite, one step - one bite ...”

  To clip or not to clip – there’s a heated debate. That’s a really tough one. Pickles’ breeders, Thomas and Sylvia, allowed Pickles to learn to fly before he was clipped and just before he came to me. Learning to fly while young is important for balance and confidence. When Pickles is flighted, he flies extremely well.

  In my last book, I mentioned that we might try free flight with Pickles and since then, we did. It didn’t work out well. Here is a parrot who is out of his cage all the time except to sleep at night and has playstands or rope/boing set-ups in other rooms so that he can join us wherever we are. He’s happy to hang out in different areas with us and what’s important to him is that he has company. If we’re too busy, he has his cage, playstand and variety of toys in the livingroom to amuse him. But when we stopped clipping him, suddenly none of that was good enough for him and he had to be by our side, or on us, at all times. And if he was right there with you, he demanded your full attention so you could do nothing else. This just wasn’t practical.

  Some people say birds were meant to fly and they have a point, of course. But on the other hand, birds were not meant to live in houses. Most people cannot supply bird safe homes for a flighted bird who can access every inch of the house. That means, flighted birds must be supervised the entire time that they are out and the rest of the time, they must be caged. I’ve heard some bird owners say that their parrots are free to fly around the home all day – that they know their boundaries and they basically stick with their humans the entire time. If that can be done, I think it’s great but let’s face it; this isn’t practical for the average bird owner. However, I have to wonder if most free-flighted birds aren’t caged the majority of the time or, at the very least, have an outdoor aviary or designated bird room. I know of one person who lets her bird fly free around the house but only when she has time to supervise – about an hour a day. The rest of the time, that bird is left by himself in a spare room that is set up for just him. I’m not saying it can’t been done and it’s awesome if you have the means to do it but most people do not and I think it’s unfair for people to insist that others should let their birds fly free in the home.

  We choose to keep Pickles’ flying to a minimum, mostly for his own safety and also to keep him out of the stirfry. We prefer chicken, rather than parrot, in our Chinese food. In Pickles’ case, he has a very happy home life with total freedom from the cage, lots of toys and foraging opportunities, tons of attention and interaction from Neil and I and the opportunity (through playstands and ropes) to accompany us in all the other rooms if he so chooses.

  Pickles is seldom clipped and when he is, it’s in the summer because we are traveling or walking outside with him and don’t want accidents to happen and also because we get a lot of company during the nice weather and people can’t be trusted to go in and out doors without leaving them open. We have a system but guests can’t be expected to follow our rules – it’s too easy for them to forget there’s a bird in the house.

  Even when Pickles is clipped, it’s a mild clip, which allows him to fly short distances if he’s startled, rather than crash to the ground. Usually, when he’s startled off his high playstand in the livingroom, he has enough height to make it through the kitchen, down the hall and into the far bedroom. A hard bank at the end of the hall, and just before the bedroom, will carry him into the bathroom. We always try to remember to shut the toilet seat or shut the door if we’re running a bath but one hot summer day, I left the bathroom door open while I soaked in the tub because it was too hot with the door closed. I heard a screech from the livingroom – something had startled Pickles – and then I heard the wing swooshing down the hall. He was losing momentum as he arrived at the end of the hall but managed to swerve into the bathroom and land perfectly on my bent, but soapy/slippery knees. I think I still have scars from him trying to grab a foothold and I was a little annoyed because I had taken a bath rather than a shower to preserve my make-up but all his flapping, sliding and splashing took care of that. After I got him under control, I set him on the tub ledge to entertain himself while I finished my bath. This too is slippery for him so he sat in one spot mad, muttering between preening and complaining, “Water, bad”.

  Even when Pickles is able to fly, and knows he can, he prefers to walk on those rare occasions he’s in the traveling mood. Maybe it’s because flying is tiring for him, since his chest muscles aren’t as toned
as they should be for flight, but I think walking is more interesting for him because there’s so many things to discover along the way. He’s not usually that comfortable on the floor for long but lately, he’s been a little more interested and we’re not as anal as we used to be about him being down there.

  Recently, Neil was out of town on a contract job and the bread-making job fell to me. We have a bread maker and Neil is usually in charge of that but while he was gone, I needed bread so I decided to try my hand at it. I pulled the big bag of flour down from the shelf and set it on the floor because there was nowhere to place it on the counter. I had been busy writing while Neil was gone and got a little – okay, a lot – behind with the dishes, so they took up the counter space. Just as I was pulling out the measuring cup, someone knocked on the door so I went to answer it. There is a door in the diningroom leading to the mudroom, which is the entrance off the front door. For those who are unfamiliar with mudrooms, it’s what we call the entranceway where we take our muddy or wet shoes before entering the house. Plus, it works well for a buffer to keep Pickles from flying out the open front door.

  Pickles loves company so when I took so long speaking to my caller, I guess he decided to investigate and try to see who came to visit. He has to go through the kitchen on the way to the diningroom and the bag of flour obviously caught his interest because I returned to find that he had chewed a hole in the bag, releasing flour all over the floor with Pickles smack dab in the middle, taking a sand bath. He was having a great old time and flour was floating through the air in a cloud. Pickles was completely white and Neeka was getting grayer by the minute while he stood near Pickles observing the mayhem. I was so bloody irked with the mess he left me to clean that I was tempted to dump him in a sink full of water just to watch him turn to glue. When I took him back to his playstand, he gave one big, happy fluff-up and now I had flour floating all over the livingroom. ARG!

  It’s funny that something that would usually be scary to Pickles, ceases to be scary if it’s on the floor. If I were to hold up gallon jug of milk, a carton of pop or a bag of groceries, he would be uncomfortable and ready to flee. But one day we brought groceries in from the car and set them on the floor, just inside the door. I started picking up bags, one at a time, to put everything away and when I went back for another bag, there was Pickles, snapping the plastic lid of the milk. I snatched it away from him and, unperturbed; he headed for the pop box and set to ripping it open. I snatched that away too, set them on the counter and by the time I turned back to him, he had proceeded to rip open all the grocery bags. There was not one single thing on the floor or in the bags that scared him but when I set him up on his playstand, I went back and grabbed a bag to see what would happen if I held it in front of him and sure enough, he ran to the furthest perch away from the evil bag. Retard.

  Pickles is so cute when he’s walking on the floor, especially if he’s not sure if he really wants to be there, or if we stand in his way. When he’s being a little timid, he does his slow motion chicken walk, head slowly bobbing with each step and practically tippy-toeing. Then he gets really close to something he’s not sure about, cranes his neck as close as possible from as far away as possible, suddenly imagines it’s attacking him and bolts – half hopping, half flying to safety. If we stand in his way and keep him from going somewhere, he will turn around so he’s facing away from us and walk backwards to where he wants to go. He seems to think he is fooling us into thinking; if he’s facing the other way, he must be walking away from us. So we let him buzz around backwards just for a laugh.

  There was another time Pickles took a walk. I’m sure some of you are thinking, my God, that bird ventures out alone a lot! But it only seems like that because, remember, these thing have all happened over the course of nine years. Anyway, I was taking a bath with the door closed and this door has a few inch gap at the bottom – I don’t know why, the place came like this and we’ve just never got around to replacing the door because we keep planning to remodel it and make it bigger. While I was lying in the tub, I hear a little voice saying, “Want out”. I glance over and there’s Pickles trying to squeeze under the door. He doesn’t say, “Want in” and maybe to him, wanting ‘out’ of the hall and into the bathroom is the same thing.

  I was done anyway so I got up, dried myself and opened the door to let Pickles in. But he was gone. I looked all over in the back rooms and couldn’t find him but these days I have a little helper. “Where’d Pickles go, Neeka?” Neeka immediately runs to the chair next to the bed and there’s Pickles, bobbing his head and nose laughing, as usual. That bird gets a real kick out of being invisible and unfindable.

  He must have climbed up the clothes that were draped across the chair and had already managed to decorate my pajamas with nice little holes. I asked him to step up but he said, “No!” and punctuated his point but snapping a button off in one quick motion.

  I insisted he step up and once he did, he flipped over, upside down on my hand. Each time I righted him back up, over he went again. I gave up and headed down the hall to put him on his stand, hands at my side, Pickles dangling a couple of feet off the ground. As we passed through the kitchen, Pickles found himself over top of Daddy’s work boots and immediately let go and fell part way inside one of them. He loves Daddy’s boots and there they were, all alone and unattended, just ripe for the picking. He hopped off and onto the floor, grabbed a shoelace and began a tugging on it. The boots ain’t budging. “Stuck” he said, as he kept trying.

  Neeka figured, if Pickles could play with the boots, so could he, so he grabbed the shoelace on the other side and started pulling. Bird on one side, dog on the other, playing tug-a-war. Neeka’s stronger so the boot started edging his way and each time Neeka tugged, Pickles slid with the boot, shoelace still in his beak. Neeka pulled him around for a minute but finally Pickles realized he was losing ground and there was just no point, so he headed in another direction. And that’s when his fun ended, I took him home.

  So, Pickles may not be technically flighted but he gets around to some degree with both his wings and his feet. Ideally, he would be free to fly and be a bird but he isn’t in the wild and we can’t give a captive bird the same freedom he would enjoy in nature. Not without taking away other freedoms that he enjoys in our home. If Pickles were flighted, we would need to confine him to his cage a heck of a lot more. And that’s not an option for any of us.

  Chapter 15

  Who Owns Who?

  “Parrots will do as they please, humans should relax and get used to the idea.”

  “Mom's always bossing me around - don't do this, don't do that. I finally told her, "You're not the boss of me, you don't own me!" And she said, "Yes I am, and yes I do. I paid a lot of cash for you and I own your ass." "Oh YEAH?!" I said "Well you're ... you've ... you got RIPPED OFF MAN!" I sure told her eh?”

  “When I get mad because I’m not getting what I want and you think I’m banging my toys? I'm not. I'm communicating in Morse code cuz you don't seem to UNDERSTAND ENGLISH!”

  “Ohhh, I wish I could slam a door. Wouldn't that just be the topping on the cake? To be able to argue with mom, stomp out of the room and slam the door behind me. I tried it once, but the door just kinda went 'click'. But it was a loud click. I think she got the point.”

  “When the world says, "Give up" hope whispers, "Try it one more time". Mom says, "Try that again and I’ll wring your little neck". I don't have a hope in hell.”

  “Mom didn't turn on the TV for me this morning so I got a hold of the remote control and in the process of trying to make it work, I got a little carried away and chewed it to pieces. Mom said "Didn't you see the 'ON' button??" I said "Yes, but I don't believe everything I read.”

  “You know how annoying it is when you're down to the last bite of something really good and somebody snatches it away and eats it themselves? Well, that's not true. It didn't annoy me at all today when I snatched the last bite of mom's muffin.”

  ““I read
that the average human body is comprised of approximately 61% water. When I told mom, she didn't believe it and we had an argu-ment. Arguing with her is a game that you're just not going to win so I re-sorted to name calling and called her a big ugly bag of mostly water. Then I turned and ran.”

  “I was on the counter and tried to chew on the corner of the wall. Mom told me to leave it alone. I looked at her and went for the wall again. Mom told me to stop it. I paused then went right back to it. Mom told me - STOP IT! But I still persisted. She said "What's the matter with you? Are you mentally challenged?" I said, "No, but I'm willing to learn."“

  “Sometimes, when I meet new people, I say really stupid things. It's the answers to the stupid questions that I anticipate they're going to ask.”

  “I'm not supposed to bite, and I'm not supposed to drink alcohol but if you ignore the rules during a party, you can hit 2 birds with one stone.”

  The ‘dominance’ theories that you hear some people talking about with regards to parrots is something that really sticks in my craw. Height and dominance always seem to be lumped together and I’ve often heard that a parrot should never be allowed to perch above you and that it makes the bird think he’s dominating you. Perhaps that may be true with some birds but it certainly wasn’t the case with Pickles. I have never read anything, from a good source, that says the most dominant parrot is the highest one perched in trees. What I have read is that they actually prefer to be closer to the ground for foraging and that the higher bird is a quicker meal for birds of prey.