What did we get ourselves into?

Max was about 4 1/2 months old when we brought her home. This was so exciting! But our reading and research had not prepared us for actually having her. Did we make a mistake? We were overwhelmed at first and were quietly discussing whether we should consider returning her to her breeder. She didn't seem happy (not exactly sure what we were hoping for!) At exactly that moment she looked at us and very clearly said, "I love you!" These were the first words we'd ever heard out of her, and she wouldn't say that phrase for another 2 years or so. We snapped out of it and decided to redouble our efforts and do everything we could to keep her and make her happy.

After we'd had her for a few weeks (or was it months?) she developed an annoying squawking habit. This actually is not a problem -- they were just normal timneh vocalizations, but we really didn't know that. We thought we were doing something wrong and needed to fix the problem. Conventional parrot wisdom at the time mandated that you cover the bird to stop him from screaming. We tried that, with the following result:



Poor, poor Max that she had to go through our learning curve! Luckily she is very resiliant and is a wonderful bird despite our inexperience in the beginning! And the lessons we learned from her have allowed us to successfully work with more difficult parrots.

Anyway, we saw her trying to be part of the family by looking at us while she was covered and decided that there had to be a better way to deal with the noise. We quickly sold our condo and moved into a house where she could be as loud as she wanted and not bother anyone. And now we can't imagine our lives without her grey noises!