“Jing” Jane Hallander’s Bird. She now lives with Rick and Patti in Kanab.
A while back I wrote a post (original post here) about how to simulate having a bird before you actually got one in order to prepare yourself and your household for what was in store for you. Apparently people seemed to like it because it went everywhere; chat groups, bird boards, parrot forums of all kinds reposted the link and I couldn’t be happier. While it pleases me people enjoyed the post, I also got an email as a result of it that stated, “We really want to get a bird! We aren’t ready!” Now that made me happy. It’s not that I don’t want this family to get a bird; I want them to get one when they’re good and ready for one and not a minute before.
So in view of the success of that post, I thought about it some more and came up with a few more exercises to do so people have an even clearer idea of what having a bird in your home is like. Good luck.
Find a pair of nail clippers. Apply them to your finger. Bear down on them hard enough to draw blood. Repeat until you scream. Do this exercise at least twice a day until you have learned the concepts of Positive Reinforcement Training.
Go out and spend at least a hundred dollars on a gorgeous pair of white pants that fit perfectly and would look great with everything. Now smear some parrot poop on them from a bird that just ate some spaghetti with tomato sauce.
If you have linoleum, get some pliers and a screwdriver. Use the screwdriver to pull up a corner of it. Now using the pliers, rip about for or five square inches of it completely off the floor. If you have carpeting, yank about an eight square-inch section from a corner and fray it with a pair of wire cutters.
Using some feathers you got from the bird supply store, brush a few into your hair and leave it there. Now go out on a date.
Stay home. And I mean stay home a lot. Escape now and then to pick up bird food, supplies from the local Bird Store, but then hurry home. Because that’s where you’ll be for the majority of your time.
Using your nail clippers, make some gouges in the leather strap of your watch- your expensive dress watch.
Rip some of the keys off of your laptop and hide them from yourself.
Get a banana. Peel it and slice about three inches of it off and hide the piece behind the sofa. Leave it there for a few months.
Remove the shoe laces from your sneakers and cut off the plastic thingies on the ends. Fray the ends of the laces and attempt to re-lace your sneakers.
Using a scissors, fray the edges of your sofa arms. Attempt to cover it up with doilies. Finally give up because it looks so cheesy and use some old bed sheets to cover the damned sofa. Finally upgrade to a slipcover. At least you can launder it.
If you’re planning on getting a cockatoo, go to your toolbox and get your drill out. Drill some holes in your walls. Now try and rearrange your artwork to cover up the holes until you can get somebody to come over and do some patch work. Once you get the holes fixed, repeat the process in another room.
Acquire a half an almond and jam it in behind the thermostat cover. Pretend you don’t know why it’s 50 degrees outside and your living room feels like a sauna.
Call your Mother-in-law.While you’re chatting on the phone have a friend repeatedly make loud parrot noises such as screaming and chattering. If you really want to get the full effect, have your friend throw in the occasional swear word and fire alarm sound.
Get some mango. Cut it up in small pieces. Throw them above your head and let them fall. Let the pieces dry to a cement-like consistency. Using a scraper, attempt to get it off the tile. If it lands on any carpeting, try and pull as much as you can out without pulling the carpet fibers completely out of the nap. Eventually give up and rent a steam cleaner. Repeat every time mangos come into season.
Develop a hangnail. When it’s nice and sore get a fork and jab it into the hangnail without screaming. You have now learned when it’s time your birds need grooming.
Start a conversation with a human. When you get to the best part of the conversation, have another person interrupt by screaming very loudly or saying “What?” “What? “What?” repeatedly.
Turn on your favorite television show. While this is on, play that DVD you have of wild parrots in the jungle screaming and turn it up during all the best parts of the show.
Wind up a toy that walks and place on one end of a table. Go into the kitchen and attempt to make dinner. When the toy falls onto the floor, retrieve the toy and place it back on the table. Wind it up again and attempt to finish making dinner. Retrieve toy once again when it falls and return to the task in the kitchen. Do this until you can’t stand it any more. Then do it some more. This is practice for when your bird flies off his play gym.
Take your best t-shirts and rip some nice, healthy holes in the shoulders. Don’t forget to fray the collar.
Get out your flip flops and with a wire cutters, snip little pieces of the flip flops and scatter them around on your closet floor. (This actually happened to me. I kept wondering what Pepper was doing in my closet. I found out when I found one flip-flop in a pile of tiny pieces next to the whole undamaged one.)
While this is just a light-hearted piece on the possible destructiveness of birds, if you have a bird already, you’ll recognize a kernel of truth in these exercises. Oh, and if you don’t have a bird already, you are welcome to come over and look at my dining room walls.
May 3, 2011 at 9:37 am
These are great!! My favorite is the phone calls. Chief(U2) Smokey(CAG) & Shar (Senegal) are all in the living room. AS SOON AS I PICK UP A PHONE….they are beeping yelling screaming cussing chatting..then it repeats. If you ignore them they get louder. I AM a bird person…so these antics really crack me up. Not so much for the people on the other end of the phone.
Loving bird poops is a MUST!!! LEARN the warning signs. My kids always say “so & so” popped on you ha ha. I always say, if I was worried about poop I wouldn’t have birds 🙂
LikeLike
May 3, 2011 at 11:20 am
Once again, you hit the nail on the head with this post. Instead of a flip flop, though, my husband learned the hard way why it was a bad idea to leave his hammer in the bird room when we went to work. The handle didn’t stand a chance.
I found almost all my laptop keyboard keys!
LikeLike
May 3, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I would be rolling on the floor but I am too busy cleaning the walls…. Awesome way to put a light hearted spin on the realities of being owned by a parrot…or more….
Weebee
LikeLike
May 3, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Great post! Funny and true. Also loved seeing Amy in one of the photos. Love her. 🙂
LikeLike
May 3, 2011 at 11:07 pm
It’s so important for us “bird folk” to be able to laugh about all the little “disasters.” Thanks for giving my funny bone a good workout.
LikeLike
May 3, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Oh my goodness! This all rang so true (owned birds for over twenty five years) that I can hardly breathe and my stomach hurts from laughing hysterically! Excellent work Patricia!
Have all these things happened to you or have you collected them from friends? You are a true genius at the written word.
Michelle
LikeLike
May 6, 2011 at 9:10 am
Pretending you have the bird before you really do – just the basic concept reminds me of when my hubby and I got fish. The pet store told us to set up the tank and wait a week before getting the fish. We stared at that tank for hours imagining the fish that would be in there!
LikeLike
May 6, 2011 at 2:47 pm
LOL. However, parrots with clipped wings are somewhat easier 🙂
Mother of a 19 yr.old Amazon & 2 – 3yr.old Caiques ………
LikeLike
May 9, 2011 at 11:34 am
lol! My conure interrupts me anytime I’m talking or on the phone with WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!
She hasn’t gotten to the laptop keys yet, but she’s done a number on the tv remote control. 🙂
I can’t wait to advance to the big guys. Its always an adventure!
LikeLike
May 9, 2011 at 3:36 pm
You forgot “Buy a Dyson.. No, it doesn’t matter how much it costs because that’s the only thing that will stand up to all the cleaning you have to do!”
All the money I could have saved buying something new every year because it just wasn’t working anymore… And new bags every week? No thanks!
Your list is so, so true. I miss having nice shirts and my vintage couch will never be the same again, but when I’ve been having a rough day and come home to “HI BUDDY!” it’s all worth it.
LikeLike
May 13, 2011 at 9:37 pm
C,
I’m on my third Dyson. Love them, work them to the end of their life and then we move on! Next! Parker, Pepper and Nyla simply wear them out.
LikeLike
February 18, 2012 at 11:32 pm
oh Patricia, you out did yourself on this one, i gave up a long time ago trying to talk on the phone or watch tv (we just watch the cartoon network & i record my good shows on my bedroom tv….although i never get to watch them…:::sigh::::….& i tell people, get a bunch of stuffed parrot toys, sit them around the room, now try to spend equal time with each, dont let the others think you like one of the others more…you’ll never live it down…..you could make this a monthly update Pat, we could add a million things to it, talk about education….great job!!
LikeLike
February 23, 2012 at 11:08 am
Went through it all! From explaining to the pizza guy when ordering that my U2 and YN Amazon also want pizza (that’s why they are screaming at him), to having an empty socket where the “page up” key used to be since it had to move to the “r” keyhole since that is gone… Reminds me – I once actually talked a keyboard company into sending me an “e” key because the one I had was inexplicably gone…
LikeLike