Who Knew Birdbrain Could Be a Compliment?

Who Knew "Birdbrain" Could be a compliment? 

I grew up with dogs and cats and never considered a bird as a pet. The birds were simple-minded creatures that you put in a cage, supplied them with birdseed and water and cleaned the cage every so often. I went for years with the image firmly in mind - and then one day both of my daughters have decided to buy a parrot. Before I knew it we had two small parrots in the house and my life (and the opinion of the birds) changed forever.

That did not happen at once, in the first parrots (once a Senegal parrot and Paco, a Meyers) was the only creatures in a cage. So after only three weeks, once managed to consume something toxic (we never found out what) and was deathly ill. She fluffed up, stopped eating and was so weak that she could not even perch. After about three weeks forced feeding and a long stay at the vet called the vet's office and said we might as well get her, she had very little time left. We brought home once and my daughter, Cathay and I took turns holding her bowl in our hands to try to keep her warm while force-feeding her and waited for her to expire.

Once stubbornly refused to die themselves. Over the next few weeks she began to eat and perch, and before long she was swung around her cage as Tarzan. Even at a time that she had decided to bond with me. She began to make words and surprisingly (for me) the word was not random. She quickly learned to say her name, ask for apple and do flips off my arm while sqawking "Wheee!". It slowly dawned on me that there was an intelligence at work within that small feather buds.

Even more impressive when first viewed the ability to reason. At first when she was on me and I did nothing to disturb her, she immediately would bite my arm as hard as she could. After all, had I done something wrong and needed to be. But when she noticed that when she bit me I would start to "leak" red liquid, and to disturb her even more. She obviously could not understand why I did it - it was very unbirdly. In short, she stopped biting hard and settled for strangling my ear instead. It was designed to correct me, without all that messy delicious.

Once revealed some other very human-like features as well. At that time she was in the same cage as Paco, which is slightly less than once, much less aggressive. I noticed after awhile that Paco was ... good "chicken-chopped". Once fairly bossed him around; Paco either did what she wanted, or that she would strangle him until he did. It was not a completely one-sided relationship itself - once gave shelter to him in return. Since one of our cats managed to get on top of their cage and decided to go "fishing", Paco tumbled to the bottom of the cage in fright, while once passed him on the way up. A quick bite and the cat let out a howl, jumped down and never went near the cage again.

Once and Paco now live in separate cages, and they have been joined by three other rescue parrots and an "autistic" cockatoo, who was badly abused. We also have two rescue dogs including a Lab that is a pretty smart cookie - but I think even he is not quite the same mental level as once. She not only has a fairly large vocabulary of "human" word these days, she has also become an expert at manipulating me into doing what she wants - not bad for a "birdbrain".