Parrot Musings

Here is a picture of Rocky's naughtiness. You can see that the cockatiels' travel cage is right next to the couch. Rocky sees this as an invitation to go on the couch whenever he wants to. At least he is not destructive! We think he does this because he is very needy and knows he gets attention when he goes places he's not supposed to be.

Thomas has a bowl of cereal for dessert almost every night (yes, I think that's kind of strange, too). Max gets so excited because she knows that she gets to lick out the milk that's at the bottom of the bowl. Rocky has also discovered that he likes to lick the bottom of the bowl, so there can be some competition for his leftovers. The milk is actually nut milk that we make by blending water and nuts.

Here is Max helping Thomas make his lunches for the rest of the week. Does she ever love peanut butter! He left his bread unattended for a few seconds as he went to the fridge to get jelly, and she pounced on her chance to eat up. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but her eyes are pinning away.


And here she is with a huge piece of cheese. Can you believe her? We had cut up some cheese to eat cheese and crackers as an appetizer. As soon as one of us was a suitable distance away from the cheese, she flew over there and started helping herself! I apologize for the poor picture quality, but she was perched on my hand and I was unzipping my camera from its camera bag and trying to take the picture, all while thwarting her from eating this cheese. I did win, by the way, although she took a few small bites. I still cannot get over how much cheese she wanted to eat! When I use cheese for treats, she gets maybe 1/20 of what she's currently holding.

All of these pictures were taken last night! Thomas and I were joking that if you went by Max's actions last night, and her desperate forage for food around our house, you'd think we starved her.

I think I've mentioned before that Max will sometimes hang out in the kitchen by herself at night while all of the rest of the house's inhabitants are in the living room. We listen to make sure she stays on her stand and check on her every 15 minutes or so. Earlier this week, I went to check on her and found that she had just started eating a stick of butter that had been left out. Luckily she hadn't eaten much before I stopped her. I didn't get a picture of this as I was more concerned about her not eating the butter. Apparently she didn't get the memo about how parrots shouldn't eat a lot of dairy!