For the Birds

Luna (left) and Neville (right). Like from Harry Potter.

Getting birds may have been a mistake.

The jury’s still out, but considering such evidence as: they’re heckin’ noisy, it’s difficult to figure out what they want or why, they require far more time and attention than we were prepared for, and are less cuddly than you’ll generally find in the prevailing images curated by bird-owners. We got them as babies, less than 12 weeks old, and they’re now almost a year old. As far as we can tell, they’re nearing sexual maturity (read: going through puberty), so things may change/level out as they truly become adults.

But let’s back up. Since I work from home full-time, and my wife goes into the office most days (at least prior to PANDEMIC 2020), and since we’re fairly isolated from the rest of the world due to our illnesses, I thought it would be fun to get some little buddies to hang out with throughout the day.

I knew that birds required training and attention. I knew that they were messy and cleaning/maintenance would be higher than many other pets. I knew they would make “noise.”

Neville put himself here and refused to leave for several minutes.

I was led to believe that Meyer’s Parrots (the kind we got), would be: 1) Quiet, 2) Self-occupying, and 3) Inclined to bond with multiple members of the household (rather than being “one-human” birds, as some breeds are).

It quickly became clear that “little buddies to hang out with” is not what these birds would be - at least not for now. They can’t really just “hang out” outside of their cage, whether on my shoulder or a nearby perch. They want to explore. As such, they require pretty much constant supervision. That can make for a good hang out buddy if your definition of a buddy is “someone who you must entertain at all times and be into whatever they’re into.” My personality would be much more down for that definition of buddy if my energy levels weren’t such trash.

Scaling Mount Karen.

And I can only assume that “quiet” is a relative term here: relative to other breeds, Meyers’ may be considered quiet. And I could buy that from the perspective of volume. They don’t seem to be able to produce the kind of ear(th)-shattering squawks that other breeds are capable of.

What they lack in volume, they make up for in persistence. Near as we can tell, our Meyers’ version of a cataclysm is us not being in the room with them. As long as we’re physically present in the room (they live in the TV room and, due to our depleted energy levels, they’ve had pretty good odds of having us present with them when not working), they’re fairly content, dealing devastation to wooden blocks on twisted paper ropes.

Grapes on top of the cage = entertainment for MINUTES

As soon as we leave the room it’s: Beep-beep—-BEEP.

And as they are ignored and their level of distress rises, it’s: Beep-beep—-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

And repeat for literally hours.

This particular scream (because it’s definitely not a whistle) is grating on our last nerves. And, considering their central position in the house, it’s just about enough to ensure that neither my wife nor I are productive in our jobs past a certain threshold of tolerance.

We’re trying to teach them the “cat call” whistle as an alternative attention-seeking strategy to the screaming, with limited success. They’ll do the whistle, we’ll reward them, and then they revert instantly back to the scream. Time will tell if we’ll be able to redirect this behavior effectively, or if we’ll just steadily go bald. In the meantime, our strategy is to push for behavior redirection as long as we can, and then move them to the bathroom where they get to be isolated with an Echo Dot playing them Pentatonix for a few hours.

Jean Claude van Neville

I’ll be honest that I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I even want to feature the birds on this blog, and it’s largely because I can’t decide how I feel about them. On a good day (read: little-to-no screaming), they’re quite adorable. They come out of their cage for some play sessions, we train them to fly to us, we feed them pieces of popcorn, I derp a little bit.

Something something Disney princess.

Then they remind us what little balls of screaming terror they can be, and it’s all we can do not to throw in the towel then-and-there.

If you were to chart my feelings towards them, flattening the peaks and valleys (and the valleys can be LOW), I think you’d find that I’m on an upward trajectory of affection. I’m having to work hard to shape an entire world for myself, my wife, and the birds where we can all meaningfully communicate, have mutually beneficial interactions, and experience an acceptable sense of peace and “home.” There is a feeling of satisfaction with a creature when you’ve had to work so hard toward understanding with them. Each piece of territory is hard-won, and they worm their way into your heart without you deciding that that should happen.

Seeing as we are on a no-kids trajectory, this may be the closest I get to some of those experiences. That could certainly change, but for now I’ll just continue to oscillate between cherishing and grating my teeth.

Neville’s telescopic neck.