P is for Parrots

My wife loves birds and has been a real bird lady for years.  We started out with a couple pairs of cockatiels and then she went for macaws.

Rocky, her current scarlet macaw is her baby. He loves her. She loves him. He HATES me. I hate him.

He's a one-person bird. The wife can hold and cuddle him and groom his feathers. He will even lay upside down in the palm of her hand and play dead. Beautiful bird. But dangerous to anyone besides her.

He attacks me any chance he gets. The picture above is not Rocky, but it is his twin.  You'll notice that large beak with a point on the end. That point will completely puncture  my leather cowboy boots and dig into the skin!  On the rare occasions that the wife was not around and I had to put him into his cage, I have to put on my boots, let me bite me on the foot and hold onto the boot while I lift him into the cage with my foot.

He is about 30 years old and they live to be 60 or more. Which means he will outlive us. When the wife has to get rid of him, she will cry. Me? I will do backflips of joy.

Rocky isn't the only parrot around the place.  We have flocks of quaker parrots (aka, moot parakeets) and nanday conures that frequent our outside bird feeders.  They are not native to Florida, but there have been long established flocks in the area.

Parrots, by nature, waste a lot of food. They nibble and toss. They are the mainstay for the critters on the floor of the rain forests that cannot climb or fly into the trees.  Rocky not only throws half of his food on the floor, he dunks his food in his water dish so it is always icky.

The parrots outside also toss half (or more) of the food out of the bird feeders onto the ground. Some pigeons follow them around to the various bird feeders on their daily rounds and pick up the dropped seeds.

Amazingly enough, the wife has potty trained Rocky. She will tell him to poop and he knows if he does, she'll pick him up and take him from our bird room to the living room.  Of course, she has to remember to take him back out in about a half hour or else she'll be changing clothes.