Video: The Parrot & People Paradox
Thanks to Mira Tweti for helping this issue get the attention it deserves. My favorite quote: “What you’ve got is a 3-year-old running around the house with a can opener on its face. And a megaphone.”
Mr Flapper Duck
The quacks, life and fun of Seattle's famous duck.
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8 Comments
They seem so charming when you see one in a pet store and it pays attention to you and talks to you, but the knowledge that they can outlive us stopped us every time we considered them. I can’t understand why anyone would buy one knowing that, but then I don’t understand how people take on pets that they ignore once they are no longer cute puppies or kittens. We have neighbors whose think we’re odd because we talk to our cats. They never talk to their dogs, nor do they play with them any more.
Dawn and I certainly have had our fair share of agita from Peepers & Tweek, our Green-Cheeked conures. We get bitten on a regular basis, they shriek like pissed-off banshees, and they’ve torn and bitten through more than a few shirts. All we knew when we got them was that we loved the idea of getting conures and that Green-Cheeked conures were some of the more quiet parrots. Yeah, right. We also didn’t know that Green-Cheeked conures have well noted beak strength.
It’s like comedienne Wanda Sykes’ bit about parents never look you in the eye when they say “Children are a lot of work…but they’re worth it.” For all we weren’t told and all our misconceptions about parrots, we’ve been tempted to give them up, but I can’t do that, and I have faith that with love,attention, and time we might be able to watch tv late and take a nap on the weekends.
“They seem so charming when you see one in a pet store” — how true. That’s how we got hooked on the idea of getting conures. Little did we know that the affectionate behavior displayed in pet stores is designed to hook you.
We wanted sun conures (which are shown in the video), but found that they were extremely loud, so chose green-cheeked conures as the supposedly quiet conures. Yeaaaaah…. According to some things I’ve read subsequently, green-cheeks have the most behavioral problems of all the conures. Fantastic.
I wonder, if I had seen this video last year, would I have gone through with it?
LIke Mira, I often think that I can’t take it anymore — and we only have 2 birds. The part of the video that really hit home was “they’d never leave you.” I guess I never thought of it like that. In a way I assumed that they just looked at us as the food providers.
Incidentally, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I asked the guy at Bird Camp, a local store and bird-boarding facility, about eclectus parrots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclectus_Parrot). Not that I would get another parrot now, but maybe some time in the future when I had more space. He mentioned that eclectus have very specific dietary needs that cannot be replicated by the pet-food industry, and so he’s never known a pet eclectus that didn’t end up to be a feather-picker. Another issue that the pet industry never reveals.
Anyway, THANK YOU for posting this video. I hope it dissuades the people who aren’t ready for the commitment from getting parrots. I hope it saves some humans from losing their sanity, and some parrots from being abandoned.
Finally a show that focused on the reality of having parrots. Our current count is 2 big macaws, 1 mini macaw, 1 cockatoo, 1 nanday conure, 1 lovebird, 5 cockatiels, 3 parakeets, 4 finches and a canary. We only bought 2. At one time we had over 30 birds that someone didn’t want anymore, the “free to a good home’ flock. Ours aren’t in the house but have their own climate controlled building where they can be as loud as they want. Every night after work I’m out there spending time with them getting snuggles, getting bit and having my hair pulled out by a very fast macaw who then laughs. Weekends are cage cleaning, making toys, baths, & aviary cleaning. It’s a lot of work.
After years of parrot rescue I had to get out of it because while I love the birds, the people were making me angry & depressed. Some of my birds are now old & some are too neurotic to be pets so they will stay with us forever. We let them be birds not little people.
This was a good video. I know that these types of birds usually outlive their human owners, Macaws especially. We use to have canaries and some parakeets but they are a lot of work and somewhat messy with their bird seed. Cats work for me. The video was good though and an eye opener. I hope a lot of people got to see this.
Hi, I’m the former owner of 9 ducks for Border Collie herding practice (and pets). I moved to Istanbul, so the ducks are now at my friend’s farm in MO. Not having enough WORK to do, I stupidly got an African Grey last year. I’m a dog trainer, and had fantasies of teaching my parrot a zillion tricks.
Well, she did learn a zillion tricks. But we can only train a couple minutes a day because I have to spend 5 hours a day cleaning up poop and seeds EVERYWHERE, making home-cooked meals with 20+ ingredients, operating special lights and humidifiers to prevent feather plucking, making toys, hiding her food in foraging toys, training her to NOT scream by waiting outside the door for hours until she shuts up.
She talks a bunch, but one thing I never considered is that parrots only say what YOU say. Our parrot says random things that I said earlier in the day. So she says: knock it off! good girl, wanna come out? wanna come out? WANNA COME OUT??? poop…poop… good girl!
I think I had thought it would be more like a conversation where she would be saying interesting and novel things.
I hadn’t thought about her just repeating snippets of what I say.
Clover is quite tame, rides on my shoulder in busy urban shopping areas. Most people want one just like her, thinking she’s “cuddly”. But you can’t really touch her without getting bitten. Greys don’t want to be touched like a dog. Also, Greys are supposed to be quiet–and I’m a pro animal trainer whose dogs are all trained never to bark–but Clover still screams daily and you can hear her a block away in our urban area. And I have to harness her every day, which can be a blood-bath.
One other consideration is travel. We can’t come back to the U.S. because there is a ban on importing birds into the U.S. because of bird flu. So now that we have a parrot, we’re stuck living in Turkey…
Anyway, thanks for the video. Another thing that people should check out is this website with photos of destruction by parrots, and WAV files of what different birds sound like when screeching: http://www.parrotsr4ever.org/Pre_aquire.aspx.
Even my tiny amazon parrotlet eats through shirts, bills, checkbooks, sofa cushions, and yells at you when you leave the room! Luckily he is small enough that it isn’t loud enough to annoy our neighbors. I absolutely LOVE birds and it make me sad to see that people buy them unprepared for the involved hassle. And like Lori said, my little green man is a friend and not a little person! jeez people! Thanks for the video!
a good bird seed is of course Sunflower seeds, birds like them coz they are tasty`’”