Parrot 1 - Human 0

It is almost Parrolito´s 8-month hatchday so I thought we could take stock of life so far, let´s see:

We eat mostly parrot food. We sleep parrot hours. We hang out with parrot-friendly faces. Rather than him learning human words, I am learning the different chirps and what the "flight face" looks like (useful for catching the thing before it takes off in moth-like flight). We don´t like hands. We don´t like baths. We don´t like the color of the old dinner table, so we sold it on Craigslist. I would say taming is going really well.

Let me rephrase that: Parrot 17 - Human 0. You win.

Having an Angry Bird

Way back in high school in some other country, we were learning the verb "to fling" in English. In our adolescent amusement over nothing at all, we decided we could say "I fling a bird" every time we were asked to use it in a sentence. The teacher, exasperated by our attempts to derail her (fake) serenity, eventually let it be. Crazy always wins.

Little did we know that flinging birds would one day become an option: I rock at Angry Birds. I like birds; I know what the verb "to fling" means; I like flinging virtual things. It´s a winning combination. Angry Birds became an integral part of the mental preparation to get a parrotlet, although I spend most of my mornings trying to catch the thing instead. And the thing is generally angry. There will be wing re-clipping happening very soon.

You are not my real mom!

Parrot doesn't laugh with me

He does not laugh at me either. He is actually pretty freaked out by laughter. And clapping. And other random noises, but not the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is comparable to Mozart´s Requiem, and the ear-bleeding screeching of BART as it crosses the San Francisco bay. They all get tweet accompaniment.

So I was laughing alone and in secret when I received the official CITES Export document yesterday, that allows me to take him out of the US. This is half a victory. All those people said it would take forever, but no, it only took three weeks. Go US Fish and Wildlife! I salute you.

Parrotlet 101

A parrotlet is not a budgie.

This is a budgie:

by Electrofisch from de.wikipedia.org

> Look at the long pointy tail and the crazy tiny eyes and tiny beak! 

We may be in a Sonoma winery and you had 45 sips of wine by 11am, then you look at my portable bird and call him a budgie. Don´t.

What´s that? You want to tell me the story of how you used to have a budgie? Then you know! Not a budgie. 

Learning trees

Parrolito: I got you a Manzanita tree. We live in a tiny studio, and I got you a freaking tree. It was so big, we had to cut it into two trees. So now I am watching you learn how to be bird in a leaf-less tree. You look very awkward in it, like you are not really sure what to do. You´ve never been on a tree before. You get to the beginning of a branch and you think you have to walk up the trunk, like you forgot you have wings and ace jumping skills. You silly.

Band of Bird

Parrolito´s breeder was out of town when he hatched, and missed the opportunity to put a closed band on his leg, so he remained wild-looking, a fitting quality for a bird that acts generally like a wild untamed combustible ball of feathered madness. I have to admit, I had a secret irrational hope that a new leg band would make him more tame... but no. It does add a few bites to his new bird jewelry in his preening routine. And it has a drawing of a bear! Why a drawing of a bear?! A drawing of a Velocirraptor, that would have made way more sense.