Thinking out of the box

Rocky's screaming is not as bad as it was, but he's still not back to pre-hormone levels. We've tried many things, but keep trying more in the hopes that we'll stumble upon something that really works.

Earlier this week, he would not stop screaming. I don't know what his inspiration was, but Thomas placed him in the box where we collect all of our paper recycling to take outside:
Rocky loved it! He was shredding paper quietly! Well, not quietly, as he was singing, laughing, and talking his garbled macaw speech, but I love hearing that, so it was great.

The next morning, I tried this again. He wasn't as in to it, though it did keep him quiet. There were a few more papers in the box, enough for him to crawl his way out.
Stella didn't see me place him in the box, so she came over to investigate the strange noises.

We're definitely adding this to our arsenal to try to keep him from screaming, though we're still hoping this just ends soon and next year's hormonal season is more similar to last year's, where he quietly spent his days nesting under his cage. For a month or so, it was almost like we didn't have a macaw he was so occupied with his nest.

As an aside, this week is our three-year anniversary of having Rocky at our house. Since we don't know his hatch date, only his hatch year, this is when we celebrate. That means, officially, he is now 22 years old. What an interesting three years it has been. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.