sinbad is the other bird.
where kramer is reserved, slightly dignified and personable, sinbad only wants you to recognize his bad behaviors.
he mimics the sound of the delivery truck backing up, only screechier. he lunges at my face when i'm only trying to feed his ungrateful ass. it is guaranteed he will attempt to draw blood from your hand. if he is in a good mood, it will NOT last. he will flip out on you.
part of his problem is me. i treat him like a dog. i play tug-of-war with him. i harass the hell out of him. i put him in the sink with the water running to chill him out.
that isn't to say that we don't get along. being with them 6 days a week, they've bonded with me. and sinbad regularly climbs out of his tree and finds me wherever i'm working in the store. he's always had his wings clipped and never learned to fly. once, when his feathers got a bit long-ish, i ran back and forth with him as he tried to get a little lift. but about a foot off the ground, he kept putting his feet down.
and i realized what an asshole i'd been trying to teach a bird how to fly.
so we go through our maneuvers every day. i go in to get him out of his cage, he gets hissy. i get kramer out of her cage and put her in the tree. i come back to sinbad and of course, NOW he wants to comply. i kiss him and he tells me hello.
if i buy into his sweet coos, dropping my guard for a moment, his dick-ness is certain to appear.
So you have an asshole bird? Sounds better than an asshole cat...
ReplyDeleteAw, poor Sinbad. I'd be pissed too if I was a bird and someone clipped my wings so I couldn't fly. He might need a shrink.
ReplyDeleteso far, i've only blogged about my dog, the two birds at the store and the great dane. i've yet to get into all the fish or what's at the boyfriend's house: two dogs, two cats and another bird. (plus his mother, whom i adore.)
ReplyDeleteand you guys don't know about pixie yet. she was my dog for SEVENTEEN years, but had to be put down earlier this year.
and then there's dave, my roommate.
my life is a zoo. and i'd have it no other way.
What kind of dog is he, anyhow?
ReplyDeleteand then there's dave, my roommate.
ReplyDeleteHee!
Birds are funny, with their little personalities. My favorite aunt had a sulfur-crested cockatoo when I was growing up, that bird was hilarious. Every time she got on the phone, he'd start yelling at the dog and the cat, "knock it off!" (She always yelled at them when she got on the phone 'cause they'd start chasing each other around the house.) He liked a little skritchin' behind his crest, but he'd let you know (gently) when he was done with that. He loved peanuts in the shell, too (it was a fun game to de-shellify them). Sadly, he belonged to my uncle, really, who gained custody in the divorce. So, I never saw Jemima again.
And speaking of asshole cats... when I was a kid, we had this Siamese cat (Natasha, who went with Boris, the most mellow cat of all time whom I still love though he's been gone over 25 years) who would get up on top of the refrigerator, and every time someone walked in the kitchen, she would try to claw-swipe 'em. She got a few licks in. Also, she used to get in bed with my parents all the time when it was cold, and sometimes she'd climb up into my dad's pajama shirt while he was asleep. One time, he rolled over on her. Heh. Neither of them were very happy that night, let me tell you. I can still remember the screaming. From both of them.
Well, now that I've told you my pet-life story... Beav out!
Sinbad sounds like your typical man. God I hate men! Except me, I'm perfect. In a retarded self delusional kind of way.
ReplyDeleteAww now I want a bird. We had a neighbor with some kind of massive green parrot, I had to house-sit one and I was terrified of feeding him (I was small and he was big, at least that's how it was back then). But he was relatively nice to me.
ReplyDeleteApparently neighbor lady is worried because he's a young bird (well, in his 30's or 40's) and she wants to put him in her will to make sure he gets taken care of when she's gone. But she's only got one son. And the bird HATES him.
Teaching birds how to fly would kind of depress me. Unless he actually learned and you could then release him and be all happy. Until he found out he's not a native of the urban jungle and he doesn't know how to find peanuts in the wild. So maybe I will stop romanticizing now.