Polly Want A Cracker?

Like a firecracker perhaps? I have always been a lover of birds; have feeders all over the place; summer and winter ( I even left the house during the ice storm to go to town to get more bird seed). I'm also ready when the hummingbirds return the first week of April with various vitamin and mineral potions. And then there is Birdie, the meanest red lored amazon around. I have always had pet parakeets and Bubba, the sweetest Love Bird in the entire world, but I also wanted a big bird: had envisioned one who could talk, snuggle, do tricks and just be a loving friend. Boy, was I wrong about this bird. Birdie would rather bite your nose off or have a knuckle or two while still attached to your hand. She can bite clear through. The first thing the books tell you is to teach them a command to step up onto your hand. Birdie's eyes just flash (look at picture number one) and she opens her mouth to dare you to try this on her. She squawks so loud your eardrums sound fuzzy for a while, like a bad speaker. I can't tell you how many times and places I've been bitten. And, to make matters worse, I couldn't do more for this bird. She has a huge expensive cage with costly toys aplenty. I even bought her her own goldfish once in a tiny little goldfish bowl, but she was afraid of it. How can a bird be afraid of a tiny goldfish and want to fight with a human? She'll fly in and come sit on the back of my chair when I am at the computer. In the second picture above, she's having popcorn (which she loves)while watching me compute. Birdie has also begun to bark like my dogs, as loud as she can, which again is ear splitting. But what galls me the most is when my son comes home and she puffs up like a teddy bear and just preens and calls to him over and over and does this little head bopping dance trying to regurgitate food to feed him. She loves him and he can't stand her. She'll scream out his name many times over; endlessly calls him from the crack of dawn until he gets up. "Why don't you get rid of her," he barks back at her. I could never do that. I'll just have to love the little meany that I got and know that she loves me in her own mean way.

As a postscript, Birdie saw her pics on this post and is talking to them and quite enamored of the pics. Should have named her Narcissus.