Sunday, May 28, 2006

for the birds

the parrot
the parrot,
originally uploaded by Mishaone.

It's been a few months since this little guy came into the house and his most notable contribution here has been in the form of repeated squawks in the mornings and crap on my bed. Why my bed? I have no idea, since I'm the only one who takes pity on him and actually lets him out of his cage for a bit to stretch his legs in my room. One would think, that since 97% of the surfaces in my room are either tiled floor, smooth wooden desks and stony shelves, the parrot would, just by way of a thank you, choose to defecate on either of them, so that upon cleaing up, I could do away with the mess easily. However, as luck would have it, he appears to have taken a bit of a liking to my bed with its clean bedsheets and has indicated by his actions that it is his first choice of all the places in my room to drop a load off in.

I can't really blame him, though. He has the most incompetent of masters ever, my little brother, who gives him five minutes of attention every few days then plonks him back in his cage. I feel sorry for the poor little thing. In fact, I decided to examine him today, just to see how he's doing. Turns out he's much bigger and covered with moisture from the seaview air. This, of course, prompted me to take him for a bath. Luckily, recalling the last time I gave a bath to an animal without consulting anyone (Happy the kitten, may she rest in peace), I decided to consult the Internet, a medium that, I discovered, has a lot of information about many subjects, but almost none on whether bathing a parrot is good for him or not. Due to a lack of conclusive evidence (and the feathers on the poor thing turning black everywhere a drop of water touched them), I decided against the bath idea.

In my online wanderings, however, I did come across an article regarding teaching a parrot to talk. In a nutshell, repeat a simple phrase to the bird for 10-15 minutes at a stretch. Enunciate clearly and reassuringly feed him when he tries to make odd noises in return to encourage speech. The first word is the hardest, apparently. However, if ever you have been in a situation where you feel immensely stupid and hope to god nobody walks in on you, it's nothing compared to my feeling upon having to reassuringly enunciate "hello" to a parrot that is cocking its head at me for fifteen minutes. Thankfully, nobody did walk in and next time, I'm going to use a recording. I will, however, teach this damn parrot to talk before the summer is over. That and not to leave surprises on my bed.

Misha at Sunday, May 28, 2006

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