In all of my experience with parrots, I have yet to meet a basically hostile bird. Every time I met a parrot with an unproductive attitude, I eventually discovered a lonely and insecure little person living inside there, needing love and companionship and guidance, and always needing the freedom to fly.
When Ralph, our African Grey Congo Male was only a couple of months old he caught one of his rapidly growing toes in a cholla cactus perch. When he tried to pull free, he broke one of the bones in his foot. $600 later, he'd been gassed, x-rayed, his foot put in a cast, an Elizabethan collar around his neck, and he'd developed a very hostile, "Don't Touch Me" attitude. I can't say as I blamed him, after all he'd been through. Eventually the bone in his foot healed quite well, and today, 5 years later, he plays as if it had never been broken in the first place. But for a long time afterwards, he would not allow anyone to touch anything more than his beak. The first time you tried to pet his head, he would gently and patiently take your fingertip in his beak and move it off to the side. And the second time, he'd do the exact, same thing. But if you persisted, if you didn't listen to this wonderfully special person doing his very best to communicate to you, on the third try he'd bite the dickens out of you. So much of your relationship with your parrot is just as clear as your relationships with other people, you simply have to accustom yourself to listening. We forget sometimes that they are just as busy trying to figure us out as we are trying to understand them. |
