Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (7 page)

¾ part water

¼ part glycerine

I freeze the cookies in ziplock baggies and
Neeka likes them frozen but they will also thaw quickly.

“
I decided to bite the
bullet today and get a little wet in my water bowl.  I'm
pretty sure my feathers shrunk and now my feet look
bigger.”

“
Mommy won't get naked in
front of me anymore. Not cuz of modesty - like I care what she
looks like and like I care if she diets or not to get rid of that
cottage cheese ass - but because I bit her nipple once when she was
carrying me into the shower with her. I've never gone in the shower
with her since. I don't think she takes them anymore.”

“
Sometimes I get a cute
little bug in my water dish, like a Lady Bug, and I have to
save it from drowning.  I don't wanna pick it out with my beak
cuz I might squarsh it, or maybe even swallow it by mistake. 
That's when it's handy to have tasty Cheerios around cuz it makes a
great life preserver while providing a nice meal for the
bug”

“
Mom put a bowl of water on
the base of my playstand and put a bunch of my talon toys in the
water.  She figures it will entice me to go swimming or bathe
or something but I just walk along the edge of the bowl, nab the
toys and toss them to the ground.  Then the dog grabs them
and mom has to chase him to get them back and now she has to
wash the dog germs off.  Is it really worth it
mom?”

“
I don't know why people
have eyebrows.  Maybe just to make them look angry or
surprised.  Birds aren't supposed to pluck their feathers, so
why is it okay for people to pluck their brows?  If I had
eyebrows, I’d pluck one to look angry and the other to look
surprised.  Then people would think I’m surprised that I’m
angry.”

“
Mom read that walnuts are
good for stress and since I’ve been chewing a little too hard on my
breast feathers lately, she decided to load me up on them. mmm.
Sittin' here all mellow, listening to Pink Floyd, got the munchies,
laughing at the wall. This is some good shit man.”

“
I’m gonna highlight some of
my feathers. Cuz I think some of my feathers are more important
than the others.”

“
Playing dead works well if
there's a bear around but it's also very effective when you don't
want to take a bath.”

“
I wouldn't admit that I was
the one who stole that bag of chips.  I told mom that I
wouldn't talk to her on advice of council.  She said "Ohhh,
you'll talk to me all right" and I said "No speaka English". 
She left the room and I heard water running.  I hope she's
never heard of water boarding.”

“
Mommy went to a baby shower
and said I couldn't go.  That's okay cuz I don't like
water or rain - so I certainly wouldn't like baby
rain.”

“
Mom locks my cage door so I
don't swing on it and chop my feet off if it closes on me. If I
lost my feet, mom said she'd have to put me in a bowl of
water to float around all day cuz I wouldn't be able to sit on my
perches anymore.  Yeah, you'd like that wouldn't ya
mom?”

Getting Pickles to bathe has been our
biggest challenge. In my last book I touched on his recent feather
plucking and what we were doing to stop it. We believed, at the
time, that it had something to do with Neil working a lot and then
when he was home, catering to Pickles’ when he wanted attention.
Things got better for a while and his feathers were growing in
nicely for a couple of months then suddenly he started picking at
his chest again. It’s only his chest that he picks at and he has a
small area that comes and goes with feathers. We’ve been trying
some other things since then but we really feel that it’s because
he never gets wet.

I’m sure that some of you are thinking – My
God, why don’t they just take him to the vet?! And you’re probably
right but I’ll tell you why we’ve been putting it off. To begin
with, the closest avian vet to our small town requires a trip of
several hours and an overnight stay. Actually, one vet in Vancouver
said that it might require several testings which they wouldn’t do
all together, so that would mean staying more nights to wait for
results and going for more tests if the first ones showed nothing.
Time and expense are one thing but it’s also our commitment to
taking the holistic approach which we don’t want to abandon quite
yet because we see results and feel we just need to nail it down
better.

There is a ‘regular’ vet close by and we took
Pickles there a couple of times early on – a vet who insisted he
could vet Pickles because he’d owned an African Grey himself. The
first time (and the reason I started buying the cement perches) I
took Pickles for a nail clip. Pickles was wrapped in a towel while
this guy took
forever
clipping each nail,
just a little bit at a time. Pickles screamed the whole time and I
was so worried he’d die of heart failure (I’d heard of this with
African Greys at the vets) but it was my first trip to the vet with
Pickles and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The second time I took him there, was for a
wing clip. Both times, I refused to handle Pickles during the
procedures because I had heard that Greys tend to hold you
responsible and never forgive you, so I insisted that the nurse
assist instead. Pickles wasn’t cooperating on the table and the vet
was at a loss as to how to get at the wings without being bitten so
he had his assistant get a towel. When she came back in the room, I
was busy talking to the doctor and before I realized what was
happening, she came at Pickles with a bright, multi-colored beach
towel and sent Pickles screaming to the floor while she chased him
and threw the towel at him. It all happened in an instant so by the
time I realized what was happening, and just as I began to react,
she already had him wrapped and ready for the doctor. (When Pickles
was very young, we played with towels and I made sure he was
comfortable with them for vetting purposes but I hadn’t thought to
bring one of my own and Pickles was obviously afraid of this
colorful one.) I was mortified but she already had control of him
and I figured we’d just better get this over with. It was a
struggle and Pickles screamed the whole time but the nurse managed
to control him, bitching and complaining about Pickles the whole
time. I wanted to deck her.

When we got Pickles home, it wasn’t long
before Pickles tried to fly and landed with a thud on the ceramic
tile and broke the point of his beak clean off. Poor thing couldn’t
eat anything but soft foods for days. Neil has since taken over the
wing clipping and does a great job.

I had already decided I would never return to
this vet when I found out that yes, they had an African Grey but
they kept him in the basement because the kids were bored of him
and he was too noisy and messy.
This
was
what gave him license to believe he knew everything there was to
know about parrots. The nurse, after the last visit, even had the
nerve to tell me “I don’t think you should bring him here anymore.”
“Ya THINK?” I spat at her. That was the last I saw of either of
them. I’d never take any animal there again, let alone a
parrot.

In the meantime, we know the plucking started
around the same time that we stopped giving Pickles his Herbal
Salad. We couldn’t find anybody who could ship it to Canada because
of huge taxes or duty free problems and then, just recently, we
found someone in Canada who could provide us with a similar product
– a Twin Beaks Aviary’s Herb Salad distributor. Not long after we
started incorporating it back into Pickles’ diet, feathers started
growing in but a few weeks later, he started on them again. Result:
It seems it has
some
affect but not the
whole picture.

(Now, just in case some of you might be
thinking; maybe it’s that hemp they’re feeding him that’s causing
the problem. Well, it’s not. The information above, explains that.
It would be like saying; maybe it’s the bananas he eats. Healthy
food and balanced diet should not be considered a problem. For the
most part, Pickles enjoys a good diet but because of his dislike
for so many fresh foods, there could be a bit of an imbalance there
but that too, we are working on. Sure, there’s also a chance that
something healthy is causing it and that
would
require testing to pin it down but, for now,
we’re going to assume not.)

We started giving him Sunshine Factor Palm
Oil a few months ago because it’s part of their natural diet in the
wild and because the palm oil properties would be beneficial to
feathers and skin. Once again, it seemed to help to some extent but
didn’t stop it completely. I know that it’s supposed to take
several months for palm oil to really take effect on feathers and
Pickles needs to molt all the old ones (which he hasn’t yet) to see
how the new ones grow in. Result: It seemed to work better and
faster than the Herb Salad but still not the desired results and we
won’t know the true result under Pickles molts.

Pickles has had a UV lamp above his favorite
perch (on the outside of the cage, since he’s always out) almost
since day one. Neil did a ton of research on natural lighting and
we bought, what we think, is the best set-up out there – the
Ott-Lite full spectrum desk lamp, which can also be hung. It
simulates natural sunlight, therefore providing him with a good
source of vitamin D. These bulbs need to be changed after 10,000
hours, the equivalent of about three years, because they still give
off good light but they stop giving off the full spectrum. Pickles
originally started plucking at the same time that the bulb needed
to be replaced. This was initially what we thought the problem to
be and, upon changing bulbs, it seemed to help - but only briefly.
Result: Lighting helped but still not the cure.

Water. We’ve tried everything – showering
with us, bathing bowls (including all the tricks such as warm
water, hot water, ice cubes, floating toys, running the vacuum
etc.), kitchen sink (bending over so he can run down our arms to
bath or shower under the sink tap and most recently, a sink perch
so that he can go in and out as he pleases and play on the counter
in-between) and we’ve tried spraying him with a spray bottle. All
of these things (except the spray bottle) work
sometimes
but he usually refuses to get wet more than 2
or 3 times a month and even then, he just basically flirts with the
water and never gets much more than his head and feet damp.

But Oh My God, put juice in his cage bowl and
the guy goes nuts! After a sip or two, he fits himself right into
the bowl, dances around and tries to flip the juice with his beak,
all over his body. I’ve thought of filling the kitchen sink with
grape juice, and I suspect he might actually soak himself, but then
I’d have a sticky, grape encrusted bird. Not to mention, the mess
I’d have throughout the entire kitchen.

Pickles really likes the bird bath in his
aviary – an actual shallow, wild-bird bath – and will spend a
considerable amount of time wading in it and flicking his beak but
manages never to get any on his body. I was working around the pond
one day when I glanced over at him and couldn’t believe my eyes –
he had climbed up a nearby branch that curved into the bird bath,
got about two feet up then launched himself off the branch and
landed with a belly flop in the water. He stood stone still and
just as I was worrying that he may have hurt himself he fluffed up,
stretched out his wings, shook his whole body in excitement, turned
and scrambled right back up the branch to do it all over again! I
think it was the wettest he’s ever been just from the belly flop
splashes but alas, he has never repeated the performance since.
This was in the fall so Pickles wasn’t out in the aviary much more
and we’re hoping he’ll do it again this summer.

I try to give him lessons in bathing by
holding him up to the window to watch the robins in the shallows of
the pond. Now
they
know how to bathe.
Pickles likes to watch but won’t emulate.

The spray bottle is most effective at getting
him soaked, but he
hates
it. He runs or
flies away screaming and very upset so we just can’t bring
ourselves to force this torture on him. We don’t force Pickles into
anything that might scare, upset him or take away his sense of
control over his own life, or his respect and trust in us. Besides,
we have very hard water in Logan Lake and that stuff is like cement
if you get it on the walls, windows or floors. We literally need to
use a scraper to remove it. Nobody uses a hose on cars or windows
in this neck of the woods.

Pickles doesn’t like to be sprayed but on one
occasion, it was raining outside and Pickles wouldn’t stop
badgering me – “Wanna go in the aviary. Let’s go in the aviary.” I
informed him he did
not
want to go to the
aviary because it was raining. He knows what rain is, he tells me
“It’s raining like a bugger” when it rains, but today he was
determined to go in the aviary. I finally packed him in his little
cage to carry him out but of course, the rain got through the bars
and this made him angry so he flapped around the cage until I got
him there. I released him inside the aviary but the roof is made of
clear plexiglass so he can still see the rain and he’s positive it
will get him so now he’s flapping all over the aviary trying to get
away from it. He’s yelling at me, “Wanna go home!” but will he let
me rescue him and take him home? Noooo. After a game of cat and
mouse I finally manage to get him to step up. I place him in the
cage and now I have a flapping bird for the walk home in the rain.
It’s only about 20 feet but it seems like miles – to both of
us.