Children and birds.

The joys of having a parrot!!! Well, other than I get to freak people out when I tell them I have a son and watch the shocked expression on their faces followed by the relieved joy when I introduce them to my green feathered spoilt child!

His name is Typsy (Typs for short) or Tweedle-dee or Twinx (as my mother calls him) and others may remember him as Squawk. He is a Blue-Fronted Amazon Parrot, this being evident in the blue colour found at the top of his beak, which would be the very front of his head. As he has matured I have noticed a growing blueness on his chest feathers. He has red colouration underneath his wings as well as a mixture of red and yellow on the lapels of his wings. He also has yellow on his head….its hard to explain without painting a picture, basically he is not an African Grey and as far as I’m concerned, much more beautiful!

As you may have gathered I’m a sucker for my bird. He does get told off when he does something he shouldn’t – and don’t ever think they don’t understand you because whether it be by the tone of one’s voice or words he has gotten used to, these birds do understand a lot more than we would like.

What has always remained the funniest moment in my mind is when someone, who shall remain nameless (but let it be known that “he” was a pain in my life a while ago), decided to teach my bird swear words, to not only irritate me but most especially my mother. The person in question would happily tell me that the bird was learning the words but when ever I came back into the room the bird wouldn’t say the words until…. One day all of us were sitting in the lounge eating, Typs was voicing his opinion at this moment, most likely because he wanted some of my food too, either way, my bird was happy and the person shouted at him to shut-up, to which Typs responded “F**k off!” This has been the only time I’ve heard my bird swear and appropriately it was at the person who taught him. Understandably, all of us who were in the room were highly amused except for the offender, of course.

The liabilities of having a parrot is every now and again they do forget their place and the fact that their beaks can do a lot of damage. My fingers and my face know this all too well! However, at the same time I do except responsibility for the times that I have done something to provoke him. All in all for the two years that Typs has been with me he has probably only bitten me badly four or five times – two of those was on the same day I got him! The rest of the time these birds do crave a lot of attention and love.

Whatever you do, if you are thinking of getting a pet of any kind but for instance a parrot be ready for your life to be changed. They are like children, your responsibility. The one thing that I have learnt is parrots have a very good memory. When I got Typs he had been in another family and hadn’t been happy. The family got rid of him because apparently he wasn’t a “people bird” and only wanted to stay in his cage.

They apparently did have kids and if there is one thing I know, kids with animals don’t always go well – it scares me some times what children will do to animals. I’ve seen a boy of six torment a frog until I got it away from him! That same boy thought it was a good idea to put his new kitten in a pillow-case and spin it round a room because that’s what his granny thought of cats. The cat did survive.

Typsy is now a completely different bird to the one I got. He still avoids children (which could be sensible) but the last place he wants to be is his cage and the first place he wants to be is with human company. Of course if you have ice-cream, then he loves you even more! The most amazing thing is how people always approach birds with their fingers outstretched towards their beaks and then they wonder why they get bitten…. What I have learnt is if Typs likes you, you will know and apparently there are people out there that he automatically likes and wants to climb on to their shoulders. Otherwise they are like cats, they will come to you when they are good and ready and like dogs, they love “their” people fully; just don’t expect them to roll over and play dead! And like children don’t expect them to make your life easy….. but you will never regret it!