Toys

I don't know about your parrot but ours is pretty easy to entertain most days. For some reason, she is not that interested in all kinds of toys and gizmos like you see in the pet stores. I refer to her as a "scaredy bird" at times because she is afraid of different noises and wild colored things. She gets all up in arms over a Gortex jacket that my husband owns. It is orange and blue and when she sees it she generally morphs in to an attack bird with her beak open and poised for the kill. But, trust me, her bark is worse than her bite. She backs off as he gets closer to her. She has tried to bite the jacket when presented to her without my husband in it, however. We just learned early on to take him out of it before she greets him in the evening. Less chance of perferations that way, for both him and the jacket.

But I digress....this post was being written about toys after all!

Early on we read about a parrot's need for interaction and stimulation. We agree on both counts but just like humans, we find that Gussie will make her own choice about what she chooses to be stimulated or entertained by. Although there have been a some additions, she generally returns to the same ones over and over again.

Her favorites????

Try a small plastic bottle with beads in it. One that's just the right size for her to catch in her beak at play time. She catches them and then tosses them and likes the sound of the beads. She takes on that "attack bird" stance when I shake it before tossing it to her. Sometimes she will pick it up with her talon but has the worst coordination when she tries to put it in her mouth. She often times hits herself in the face repeatedly before she drops it in frustration. It is more than amusing but she is so focused on making that connection that we are generally the only ones laughing.

Can you guess which of the toys in the above photo is Gussie's favorite? I will give you a hint...it's the one with the most holes in it. You'll see a small white bottle in the center of the collection with red lettering. It is clearly time to replace that and I am happy to report that I found a suitable replacement earlier this week. It remains to be seen if it will become one of her favorites, however.

Where can you find these little gems? The white ones come from tooth powder at a health food store. One of the small cloudy ones comes from soap bubbles that are provided for weddings as an alternative for throwing rice. (See the note at the bottom of this post.) You can find small shampoo containers for use while traveling, which is the origin of the other small cloudy bottle. That one clearly has beads inside so the noise is good but it has never been one of her favorites.

Now I'm sure you must be wondering about the two bigger bottles. I think I will save that note for the next post. It will be entitled "More Toys and Some Training".

Note:
Do you know why we no longer throw rice as the bride and groom leave the church? This could be folklore but I was told that it was harmful to birds who come in to do the clean up. It seems that since the manufacture of that quick rice that can be cooked in about 60 seconds (you know the name), birds were eating it and because it is made to hydrate more quickly, it was actually harmful to their digestive tracts and they either died or got very sick. The longer cooked varieties suited the birds better.