Parrot Blogger - Eva Sargent
– About Eva–
Eva Sargent is a new parrot owner and long-time conservationist. Eva directs the work of Defenders of Wildlife’s Southwest office in Tucson, Arizona.
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May 28 2008
Pyewacket goes to the dogs
by Eva Sargent
I want to make clear to everyone at my local parrot rescue group that – just like I said on the application – I don’t have any dogs. It’s my boyfriend Randall who has dogs, Sparky and Cholla. Sparky is a pit bull mix and Cholla is part German shorthair. They are great dogs, but not the kind who snap to attention and unfailingly do what they are told. Before Pyewacket moved in, the dogs were at my house almost every weekend; A. P. (after Pyewacket), they had been staying home, awaiting the big day when I got up the nerve to introduce them.
In the meantime, barking dogs in my neighborhood always set Pyewacket off on a screaming binge. Granted I have no experience here, but he didn’t seem upset by the barking, but like he wanted to join in. I didn’t know if he had dogs at his former home, and I was worried that he would be terribly afraid of these big furry predators. I had confidence that I could train the dogs to behave around him, but I knew I could never teach him not to be afraid.
Finally the dogs came over. Sparky came inside first, pulling at his leash to get closer to the big bright bird – nothing like the quail he chased at his house. Pyewacket wasn’t scared; he was looking on in fascination. Sparky got to the cage and Randall held him still – I mean really still – Sparky was locked between his knees, and Randall had hold of both his leash and his collar. Pyewacket was on top of this cage, and he started to squeal and run. He was moving as fast as his feet and beak would carry him, climbing DOWN his cage toward Sparky. I was pleading “No, don’t get on the floor, please don’t get on the floor.” He stopped inches from Sparky’s face and leaned toward him saying “Hi, Hi, Hello” and squealing and whistling, delighted that a dog had come to visit. I was a little jealous; after all he doesn’t climb down his cage with a squeal of joy to meet me!
Sparky, bless him, was interested but not obsessed. After just a few minutes he laid down and went to sleep two feet from the cage. Cholla got the same reception. She was a little scared of this beast who talked, but soon she too was bored and went to sleep. Both dogs were taken aback when Pyewacket let out a high-pitched ear splitting squeak. I hope he noted their reaction and now knows how to make them back up fast.
When Sparky first met my beloved cat Rocky (RIP), they launched toward each other so fast I couldn’t stop them. But Sparky had play bowed first, so I relaxed. From that day on they were best friends. They wrestled and chased each other and just when I thought Rocky was fed up (like when he was backed into a corner and hissing), he’d start it all again by chasing Sparky across the furniture, both of them bouncing off the walls. Rocky learned how dogs move, and Sparky learned to out box cats, much to the consternation of the strays in the yard he tries to play with.
And so it may be with Pyewacket. I’m not about to let them wrestle or back each other into corners, or be unsupervised, but Sparky did play bow to his big-beaked friend, and that’s the right start.
Bulletin: Pyewacket stepped onto my arm from his cage for the first time! Thank goodness I had a walnut in my pocket.
Leave me some comments below – tell me about your birds, or give me some Pyewacket tips.
(3) Comments •
May 19 2008
Are Macaws Good Talkers?
by Eva Sargent
Yeah, I can talk.
The plethora of conflicting information about parrots extends to talking -- macaws are very good talkers, or very poor talkers, or not as good as amazons or a little better than amazons. Hopefully all this ambiguity in the literature and on the web reflects individual differences, rather than ignorance or arrogance or parrot speciesism. In any case, they certainly speak macaw well.
I can tell you that I never cared whether Pyewacket spoke English or not. It was way down on my rescue parrot wish-list, below liking me, not screaming too early in the morning, not biting, being able to be alone while I was at work, etc. The first time I heard him talk was in the quarantine room at the rescue – he suddenly said “Hi” in a loud and lurid man’s voice, the kind of man who would say “Hi, little girl. Want some candy?”
Once he got to my house, he started saying “Eva” all the time, with all kinds of inflections and intonations. My name (which is pronounced with a short E) turns out to be a natural macaw vocalization, but it is hard to shake the impression that he is specifically calling me (and maybe he is).
Last week I was in the back of the house, far from his cage (that he lives mostly on top of – another story and challenge for another day), when I heard a woman’s voice say “Hi Honey.” I crept into the hall and listened. He was practicing talking, saying over and over “Is it good? Mmmmm, good” with an occasional “Hi Turbo” thrown in. This was a wonderful discovery, not the talking per se, but my sudden realization that his former owners, who had given him up at age 3 because they had (human) babies to care for, spent time with him and taught him things. That night I gave him a bite of corn, and he said “Is it good? It’s good,” a slight variation on what I had heard earlier. This was delivered loudly, very clearly and completely in context. Even having heard him practicing earlier, I was floored and delighted.
I’m taking it slow with Pyewacket. He doesn’t like to step up off his cage, but I’m working on stick training him. I don’t force him onto my arm. We play little head-swaying parrot games but I stop when he gets really wound up. Sometimes he lets me scratch his head, but I only do it for a few seconds. I let him try some carbonated water and he was full of joy – laughing and getting his head wet and drinking more and more. I’m falling under his spell for sure, and I figured out why people want their parrots to talk, because it makes me laugh and laugh. I’m tempted to get one of those parrot speech courses (you know the guy – he’s discovered the secret and it’s guaranteed to work in 15 minutes a day or your money back). If nothing else it would give me a new game to play with my big blue friend.
Right now we are working on “I’m Pyewacket. Meow.” He’s only had that name for a week, and this morning I heard him say “I Pyewacket.” So, if you ask me, macaws are good talkers, and even better squawkers.
Over the weekend, Pyewacket met some dogs. Tune in next time.
(1) Comments •
May 14 2008
Welcomes, introductions, and explanations
by Eva Sargent
How I got mixed up in this parrot business (I blame Jamie Gilardi)
Welcome to my first blog entry, wherein I explain how I got mixed up in this parrot business, and about the perplexing and somewhat intimidating alien who lives in my house now. If you’ve read my bio, you’ve got the short version – long time conservationist, working for Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson, short time parrot owner (two weeks today).
When I was in college, I desperately wanted a parrot but slowed down just long enough to figure out that I was short on patience, commitment and resources. Years later I was working at Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, in a tiny office with two screaming macaws posted permanently outside my door. I not only didn’t want a parrot, but figured that anyone who kept macaws was clearly insane.
Then a couple of years ago I found myself in Mexico watching wild thick-billed parrots with Jamie Gilardi. Defenders of Wildlife had teamed up with World Parrot Trust to support thick-billed research and conservation, and Jamie and I were at the Madera (Chihuahua) nest site, talking to the field team and looking at thick-bills. I’ll admit right here that I’m a closet bunny hugger– despite years in the zoo biz, and the respectable objective veneer that comes with a PhD, if there’s a lemur to be hand fed or an elephant to be hosed or a tiger cub to take corny and potentially dangerous pictures with, I’m first in line, and will knock over little kids to get there. A baby thick-billed parrot needed to be banded, and I was the woman for the job. I held this little thick-bill, one of very few of its kind hatched that year, and all of a sudden I was in love with parrots again. This is obviously dangerous – I admired thick-bills in flight, I heard their laughing calls, and I was determined that they would someday return to their former haunts in Arizona and New Mexico – but hold one and smell its dusty sweetness and you start thinking crazy thoughts about having a parrot of your own.
So what’s a thinking conservationist to do? I knew I didn’t want to support breeding more pet parrots, because so many ended up unwanted. At every zoo where I’d worked, people called begging us to take their birds, because they screamed or bit or simply acted like parrots, rather than docile dogs or indifferent cats. On the long drive back from Madera, Jamie told me about parrot rescue. I found my local avian rescue organization the next week, took the required care class, and in short order I was in love with a Mexican red head named Clarita, who preened my hair and whispered in my ear. A few days later she came to my house to meet my cat, a Bengal named Rocky.
In class they said they’d adopted out over 500 parrots and never had a problem with a cat, but they can’t say that any more. Rocky was determined to have fresh parrot for lunch, and it was all I could do to hold off Rocky, stuff poor Clarita back in her carrier, and send her out the door. My heart was broken, but not nearly so much as it was as six weeks ago, when the remarkable Rocky, a cat like no other, went off to his next incarnation.
So I was back in parrot class, a year and a half after my first try. I went into the quarantine room with high hopes, but there was no whispering amazon of my dreams, just a biting mini macaw, a lovely but loud conure, a plucked cockatoo, and a blue and gold macaw with the testosterone-soaked name Turbo. The rescue angel got Turbo out of his cage and he stepped onto my shoulder (I know, say what you will, but I walk with crutches so I don’t usually have a free hand or arm for a perch). He settled down, spoke softly in macaw, and after awhile rubbed his face on mine (You’re still worrying about him next to my face, aren’t you? Me too, but let’s stick with the happy meeting here). Boy, was I in trouble, because I knew my first ever bird was about to be a macaw.
Since I’ve completely disregarded the bloggers’ guideline to keep it short, I’ll write about our adventures settling in next time. He seems perfect, but isn’t this the honeymoon period I read about? I have given him a proper name: Pyewacket.
Oh, one other point from the blog guidelines: these posting are my own, and don’t in any way represent the views of World Parrot Trust. Believe me, if this were written by WPT, it would be more scholarly, and twice as interesting!
Come back soon – Pyewacket and I are just getting started.
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