Regular readers of this little blog know that we have two large parrots sharing our world. While Tenar and Thlayli (Thy for short) are basically feathered dinosaurs, they are usually pretty smart. Imagine winged five-year-old kids that prefer to walk, or waddle, or shuffle backwards throughout the house. (You can see regular posts about them over at their Instagram page, PurgatoryParrots.)
Early most mornings they wait patiently in their alcove/room with the blinds drawn and the curtain closed until I get up, open up their space, and let them out of their cages for the morning. Some mornings, or if we forget to draw the curtain/blinds, however, they can be a bit “shouty.” On such occasions it is not uncommon for me to stumble down the north hall, duck through the curtains, open up their cages and then head back to bed. Usually about fifteen minutes later both of them are in our bedroom. While Tenar wants to come up on the bed and happily go back to sleep next to me (and not poop on the bed), Thy prefers to hang out under the bed or elsewhere in the room.
Once the day is started, they are usually given breakfast before 10am (although with shelter-in-place, this is sometimes closer to 11), then have a siesta until evening, when they shout for me to let them out so they can raid each others’ food bowls. Each has particular likes and dislikes: Tenar loves peas and beans, and Thy prefers apples and oranges. While they each receive equal amounts of whatever fresh food is on the menu that day, inevitably there are things each doesn’t eat and so they enjoy swapping cages to pilfer from the other.
I should also mention that they don’t have “assigned” cages. They are free, both when breakfast arrives and at bedtime, to enter whichever cage (the right or left) that they chose–first-one-into-a-cage-gets-that-cage sort of deal. As I said, they are usually pretty smart–about the same sort of intelligence you’d expect from a kindergartener, but while they are both over twenty years old, they behave more like toddlers emotionally.
Case in point, when we had the floors refinished and their cages had to be moved to the studio building, I was away for a night and Agent Smith didn’t give them their breakfast in a timely manner. Tenar (the Amazon) decided it would be a great idea to fill his belly with some cardboard off a toy that was in a cage. The cardboard gunked up his GI tract and he ended up spending a week in hospital (aka the vet). I was able to visit him during the week, but he was pretty groggy. They kept him on fluids to help him pass all the goopy sludge, and eventually he started eating and pooping normally, and was able to come home where he will never be allowed near another bit of cardboard again.
While he was at the vet, I got his and his brother’s space sorted. New vinyl with felt underlay was installed to help protect the now pretty floor. Then I picked up some new flashing to protect the baseboards from any chewing beaks.
By the time Tenar came home, both cages were back in their normal spots in the north office alcove.
And things were good for a while, until…