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Are your birds comical?

by Carol Davie

My birds amuse me to no end sometimes.  I marvel at what they can do, what they are thinking and what they can actually get me to do….without me even realizing it.  Do you find the same thing?

I’d really appreciate hearing from other Members about things their birds do that ‘shock’, ‘surprise’, ‘annoy’ or just plain make you laugh out loud!  I’ve seen Conures do some pretty acrobatic stunts and heard African Greys come out with some VERY unusual sounds.  I’ve also had a hand-tamed Cedar Waxwing go out of his way to ‘hide’ from me at bedtime.  What have you come across in your birding ‘world’?

My Cockatoos have probably provided me with the most ‘laugh out loud’ times in our household.  Peaches, my 11-year old Moluccan Cockatoo has had us questioning whether or not he is ‘human’ at times.

My funny story comes from several years ago.  Peaches is very adept at removing screws, nuts and bolts, etc., no matter how tightly we feel we’ve made them.   I purchased a beautiful playstand from Diane and Jim Gilchrist.  It was a tabletop stand with ladders and seed dishes and a perfect play area for my Cockatoos….except…that it was ‘tabletop’.  My husband is handy and made a stand for it.  Believe me, you do not want Cockatoos on your tables.  So the base was built and the tabletop stand attached to it.  We used every possible type of screws but Peaches would always remove them.  Hubby came up with the idea to put extra long bolts and double nut them.  He tightened them all with his drill and we thought we had solved the problem.  Now, to move this playstand from room to room, the top had to be removed from the base.  With the bolts tightened like this, even I was unable to remove them.  My husband, clever fellow that he is, showed me that he had taped a wrench to the bottom of the stand.  If I had to remove the nuts, well, there was the wrench, quite handy.  Seemed perfect, right? 

One day I heard a commotion and went to the bird room.  There was Peaches on his stand, nuts and bolts scattered everywhere.  He had removed every single one of them from the stand.  The craziest thing was that he had the wrench in his beak!  What a Kodak Moment!  Now, I know he didn’t use the wrench.  I’m sure he worked meticulously at each of those long bolts and double nuts to remove them himself.  The fact that he found the wrench afterwards and was playing as if it was his new toy was just too funny for words.

     Bargain Stand from a DAS Friend.. $25.00

     New Base for said stand:  …………$20.00

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