Vic Smith wrote in
:

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 01:41:39 +0000, Larry wrote:



Parrots both talk, INCESSANTLY. I wish they'd never learned....OR
HEARD
AN ELECTRONIC TONE! Once learned, any sound is repeated, AD NAUSEUM!
It's only funny the first 3 days. Then it drives me CRAZY!

Luckily, there is an on-off switch! Simply cover the cages and they
sleep, giving you a break in blessed SILENCE! Too quiet at home? Get
a
parrot!

Thanks for the best laugh I've had in a while, Larry.
BTW, my wife bought a battery powered "parrot" which
has a sound activated recording and playback system.
Pretty irritating after the novelty wears off.
She sent it to her mother in Poland, where it was the hit of the
village. Don't know if it still lives on.

--Vic


Have you sent Poland a "Billy Bass" plaque, yet?! The novelty wears off
them really fast, too. I see 10 a week at the local thrift shop
shelves....(c;

The parrots are very irritating, but so are all pets, sometimes. But,
I'm typing this with my hand-raised Blue and Gold Macaw sitting on my
shoulder....on one foot.....asleep....leaning against my right ear. I
can hear his little two-chambered, simple heart beating away through his
left wing. I don't see how they live 100 years with it beating so hard,
even while asleep! It's just thumping away. His head is under his right
wing, where they store it while sleeping. He snores and that one foot
he's balanced on sure has a strong grip if I move, even while he's
sleeping. It grabs on right through my t-shirt into the skin...ouch!

I used to keep fish, but every time I took them out of the tank to teach
them to talk....they always died, so I switched to parrots.

I've had birds most of my life. My first bird was a common crow that
fell out of a nest in my grandmother's front yard in upstate NY. I hand
fed it from the information in a book I found at Powers' Library in our
little town that was 100 years old. It lived outside in Summer and
inside in winter when it should have flown south. When I was in
elementary school, school let out at 3PM. That crow knew the time! It
would wait for me to exit the building, then swoop down and land on my
head, and only my head, in the sea of children running out of the
building. I think he liked me...(c; When I was in the 8th grade, one
day, it never showed up again and was never seen again, much to my hurt
and dismay. I'm glad I never found him dead. I like to think he found
him a mate...(c;

Well, I think I'll put "Roger-Roger" (he says his name just like some
pilot on the radio) back in his cage and go get some dinner....He'll be
looking for me to put him over a garbage can to "bomb" as soon as I wake
him. He's the best trained bird I ever had...POTTY TRAINED! That took 3
years of patience before he got it right. It's much better than the
skating around on bird skates my Yellow Nape, "Zeke", can do. He will
not poop on you unless he just can't help it. Very hard to teach them.
Oh, the sequence is to put him over the can (with plastic bag, please!),
say "Do your business.", to him. He will then look at the can, probably
something to do with "targeting", sometimes adding "DROP IT!" in a deep,
low voice if he remembers, then "bombing the target"....followed by
yelling, "BOMBS AWAY!!" VERY LOUDLY....to the delight of anyone who sees
it....(c; I've only seen one other bird that duplicates this trick, but
have been told of many others. Teaching them how to skate is really easy
in comparison....(c;

"NO BITING!"....MY favorite trick!

If you, a stranger, approach his cage and peer in at him, he's trained to
say, "Oh-oh...Now what?!"....(c; Great fun, every time.

As I pass his cage in the dark on my way to my bedroom, he says, "'Nite
Bird.", very quietly.....because that's what I used to say to him when he
was a chick. When I got him he was 3 days out of the egg, hand feeding
every hour or so, 24/7. He's about as long as a yardstick, now, when his
tailfeathers are new and in good condition. He can cut a whole Brazil
nut in half, melting that beak through it like a knife through butter.
He can also pick up the thinnest grape without puncturing its thin skin,
put the point of that beak inside through the skin and use his tongue to
rotate his beak around inside that grape to root out the guts of it to
eat...leaving a skin so thin you can see through it on the floor.....so
delicate it's amazing. If he wants to bite you, he could cut off your
wrist. He can also take hold of your ear and stick that leathery tongue
into your ear canal...just to get a taste of you....OR TO FEED YOU WHAT'S
IN HIS CROP IF YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED FEEDING!...(C;.....Yecch!!

Larry
--
Parrots are a LIFE sentence....
a two-year-old kid that NEVER grows up!