VStar Mama

So.....what would be the cost of hiring you to put up an aviary in my yard

Is anyone else getting a pop-up in a foreign language when signing into the forum?

Although 16-gauge wire would probably have made your job easier and been more workable for a single laborer, isn't the thicker wire overall going to provide a safer aviary?

There really is nothing I can say. I can't imagine your pain but wish I could do something to ease it. You, your family, and your fids will be in my thoughts and prayers. Cricket stories and videos were always greatly enjoyed.

Amen GC180!! You had the parrots first, and they have seen you though this incredibly stressful period of your life. If a guy is turned off enough by the parrots to back away....then that is one person not worth your time. I am sure there are parrot loving guys out there who will be thrilled to find a woman who understands the hold the fids have on your heart (at least this is my hope as I will soon find myself officially single although a parrot is not yet part of my picture).

Use a mixture of Baking soda, vinegar, a little bit of Dawn soap. It does get really foamy. Pre-heat the oven to 250 or so then turn it off. Coat sides and top with the above mixture and let it sit for a few hours then scrub it off. Worked really good on my oven (I HATE the fumes of a self cleaning oven and won't use it) except for a few more baked on stubborn spots. But from what I've heard I can use some balled up aluminum foil to scrub those off if I really want to put the effort in.

Could the days when Miss G is a little feathered tyrant also be considered progress in her recovery from her past? It sounded like, in the past, when she got distressed like this she would take it out on her self by barbering feathers.

Sorry for the tardy update. In addition to hosting my canine guests, I've been battling some nasty gastrointestinal bug that has invaded the house.Bleh... Anyhow, there was a happy ending. The puppies were picked up by their grateful Mommy yesterday afternoon. I ended up having to call Animal Control as all my other avenues of inquiry didn't return anything. When I called as said that I had two strays that I needed to be picked up the dispatcher asked if they were from an intersection near my house. When I confirmed that and the breed of dogs she said that a lady had called in for them. I was given her phone number and ended up sending a text as my calls weren't answered (probably screening and a full voice-mail box LOL). She was at my house within 20 minutes and the Golden Boys (as I referred to them) were happy to see their mom! I'm glad there was a happy ending. I wasn't feeling well at this point (having been sick all night already) so didn't give a lecture on tags or microchips. I did tell the dogs that next time they run away they were welcome to come visit! LOL

I understand the reluctance about inserting a foreign body into our animals bodies....but it is my opinion that the benefits outweigh the potential consequences. People have had lost pets returned months and even years after losing them thanks for microchips. My Boxer is a skilled escape artist/ opportunist. She loves to go walk-about. Loves to meet the neighbors and make friends. Most of the people in the immediate area know where she lives and she's been returned without my ever knowing she escaped a few times. But before my neighbors knew where she lived, people used either her tag or the microchip service to contact me and let me know where I can get her. I've had more than one person express some disappointment that they were able to contact me because they wanted to keep her, fortunately the people who Maddie choose to befriend were honest! If I didn't have two dogs already, I'd seriously entertain keeping these boys myself.

I would get the bird that talks, is not too loud, not too destructive, never plucks or mutilates, loves to cuddle, doesn't make messes, politely waits until 8am to give the human a wake up call, doesn't draw blood, is not a picky eater, and loves everyone! Wishful thinking right!

While I sit here and curse my soft mushy heart for complicating my life....I am also immensely angry about irresponsible pet owners. Why....WHY.....don't people spend the money and take the time to get their animals microchipped...... This afternoon while running around collecting children from after school activities I came across a pair of Golden Retrievers gallivanting down one of the busy city streets. So I pull over and call them over. Both are friendly as can be! Soft, fluffy, and just the epitome of the best of Golden's all over the world. They both have collars and are fatty fat fat....indicating that someone takes good care of them. I figure someone left a gate open and it won't be an issue finding their people. No one seems to be out looking for lost doggies so I take them over to my vet to check for a micro-chip. No dice. We all head back to the neighborhood I picked them up and we start asking people walking around, coming home from work, knocking on doors and asking around. No one recognizes the doggies and no one knows any one who owns Goldens. Okay....so head home and call Animal Control...closed. I start posting on the local Facebook pages, lost and found sites, craigslist, and Holloman Yard Sales, also run into a couple of biker people I know and they sound out their network. Call the police and ask if anyone reported missing dogs. Evening comes and goes and I'm not getting any calls or messages. OKay, they are good boys; like my kids, and are okay with my dogs so I'll let them stay the night. I don't mind really. But if these were my boys, I'd be turning the city upside down looking for them. I just don't understand why people don't take the time to get their dogs chipped.....or at the very least, buy some of those engraved ID tags with contact info? Some of them are really cheap and can mean the difference between getting your dogs back or the animals disappearing from your life forever. My kids already love these guys (their temp names are "Fluffy" and "Taco Bell"), but reality is I can't keep them longer than tomorrow 4pm. I'm going to call around to the local vets tomorrow and see if anyone is willing to call any clients who have two male Golden's to see if they are missing but I'm not going to hold out much hope and I'm afraid I'll be turning these sweet boys over to Animal Control tomorrow.

Very true. I suppose that since I do have sufficient knowledge of a couple of the varieties that are safe for humans I am frequently guilty of the assumption that such things are more common knowledge than they actually are.

Heck....I know there is a parrot owner kitty-corner to my backyard. They have a Grey and an Amazon and when they'd leave the porch door open or windows open in the Summer I could hear the Amazon singing and whistling and making all kinds of happy noises. I started to whistle the same notes back and start a "conversation". I'm pretty sure they think they have a crazy neighbor. I'd pay them to let me come play with their birds.....

Makes me wish I wasn't in the armpit of New Mexico....

The internet is a wonderful place http://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/2013/04/how-to-make-aloe-vera-juice.html#.Ubo1rPnI3pu

I do realize that there are many variables that could be contributing to the lack of age 22+ companion parrots in homes; and I do believe that if this is the case, then the sample captive parrot populations used to get an average captive lifespan of 40-60 years is also skewed as it is not reflecting the actual average lifespan of the home-based captive parrot population. I haven't been able to dig up information on how the captive age estimate was reached, but if the parrot population that was studied was conducted primarily on zoo, rescue, and sanctuary populations then the numbers aren't reflective of pet population demographics. What they are reflective of is the average lifespan of institutional parrots. As you stated, one of the primary differences between a home parrot and an institutional parrot is the degree and application of human knowledge. The humans responsible for institutional parrot care are more likely to be educated and up-to-date on appropriate diet requirements and environmental safety for the animals. Now that I've had some time to look over the Cosmo study I found, I noticed that Dr. Pepperburg's work was heavily referenced and cited. Dr. Pepperburg broke the ground for researchers taking the home-companion study track to be taken seriously. After reading a (I suspect) heavily summarized rendition of Pepperburg's struggle to gain professional credibility for her research, I believe that the Cosmo research would probably never have been published. It leaves me wondering however, I see many people counting the identifiable words that their parrots use; to what extent would a parrots vocabulary be expanded if we considered all meaningful sounds that they use? (The Cosmo study evaluated the parrot's use of units; not just language) Not just words, but the microwave beeps, car alarms, other-species mimicry, the (wonderful) water gurgling sounds, random utterances, etcetera. The forum thread about how the parrot refers to the parront is an example. If I recall right (without going back to look at the thread) there is a parrot that uses "Rom" for a human name, and another who uses "Woooo". While neither of these utterances qualifies as a unit of language ( as would Mom, servant, waiter, or Dad), I think both of them would qualify as use of speech as the terms are used purposely and in a meaningful manner. So, if we started counting all parrot vocal utterances, used meaningfully, as forms of speech, how truly communicative are parrots?

Great research! Love it! As a student, for me, it is also necessary to dig into the references to evaluate the sources of information. Not all data is created equal. In school, I am typically limited to peer-reviewed sources of information for assignments. This has made it necessary for me to be discerning about what I use in my research projects Although you pulled this data from the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology program, and their articles was referenced and cited, I went to check the references used to gather the information. Of the sources listed where the captivity and lifespan information was provided, 2 were web links that were no longer in service, two were books and it will take me some time to get my hands on them to check the veracity of the data and the remaining articles were from people studying captive Greys. I don't doubt that those studies pulled information from other African Grey studies but without those references to check out the information sources I can't corroborate what the University has on their website and I am not going to shift my position until I have better data. I'll search my University database for more information. Either way using your numbers, at 31, Alex was still 9 years younger than the low range of captivity lifespan and 9 years over wild life span. I have only heard about people with parrots over 30 in a few instances in this forum. One of the posters from Birdtricks (and I know how many people feel about that organization, but they are still bird owners) has a Galah that is 64. Growing up, I knew a women who inherited a parrot from a relative that was definitely over 30 but true age unknown. And I have a friend in Albuquerque who has a parrot that is 42 (my birdfriend Crackers. He's not very monogamous though as he has a thing for blond women....any blond woman apparently). My point is that there should be many more 22+ year old birds (based off of the pet ownership statistics from 1991). I see more of them in rescues and sanctuaries than I see them in people's homes. By the way, I found a study about Cosmo, if anyone wants a PDF of it please message me an email address. The file is too big to attach to this message.

Has anyone who expressed an opinion regarding the life of Alex with Dr. Pepperburg ever read either "The Alex Studies" or "Alex and Me"? You've seen a few videos of Alex asking to "go back" and decide that she and her lab student were poor caretakers? Have you watched every possible minute and hour of tape that exists on Alex's experiments? The portrait of Alex in the biography "Alex and Me" doesn't imply an mentally abused parrot. If anything, it alludes to the evolution of Alex the frightened baby gray into Alex commander of everyone around him (apparently nicknamed Mr. A by the students). He had toys, was around people constantly, and was always being interacted with. I'd wager that 90% of companion parrots don't get anything close to the daily amount of attention that Alex got. Stories were told about Alex running new students ragged as he ran through his list of demands that his caretakers fulfill. One of the things that Alex learned was that he had command of his environment. If he really didn't want to work, then he came up with some pretty creative ways to not work. Like being asked "what color" or "what matter" and giving the trainer every possible answer EXCEPT the right one (which is a statistical improbability). In an emotional sense, he was not much different from any kindergarten or first grader asked to do a page of 100 math problems. Was it Alex's plucked state that got you riled up? I've seen it stated HERE that some birds are chronic pluckers and nothing is going to change that. As for his life span, at 31, Alex was only 9 years younger than the average lifespan for companion grey parrots. I know that everyone falls back to the 60-70 year number, but truth is, that in human homes, these birds are averaging half of their wild lifespan. Alex's bout with Aspergillius may also have contributed to his shortened life span. Dr Pepperburg had to resort to surgery in order to save his life. Maybe that also contributed to his shortened life span. Should we call her a bad pet owner for that too? Irene ensured that Alex was always cared for first. When money got tight, she is the one who ate tofu and ramen while Alex was eating fresh organic veggies. I've seen people more willing to give up their pets than their expensive cell phone plans or cigarette habits. In order to achieve statistical significance, he had to go through hundreds of repetitions. This was a scientific requirement in order to achieve validity and reliability. It doesn't matter how many anecdotes Grey owners have about the cleverness of their birds; anecdotes are NOT acceptable evidence regardless of how we feel about our companions. Pepperburg was setting out to PROVE what parrots owners know. I don't know what, if any, kind of scientific backgrounds everyone has on this site. As a psychology student I completely understand the need for statistical significance, and the need for Irene to treat Alex like a colleague instead of like a pet. She had to remain objective for the sake of science. But no one can work closely with another for 30 years, through thick and thin, continually fight for funding, professional respect, space to work, overcoming obstacles, and still produce credible scientific evidence that Grey parrots are every bit as smart and some of the same cognitive capabilities as humans and NOT FORM AN EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT. Short of her being without emotional capabilities (i.e. sociopath, psychopath etc) it doesn't happen. How many of you on this site have success with your parrots trying to force them to do things they don't want to do? If Alex was a put upon as you all want to see him, then it would be a complete non-issue because Dr. Pepperburg would never have gotten this far. Her experiment would have failed years and years ago and instead of being a household name, Alex wouldn't exist as a part of groundbreaking scientific history.

Well, I'll keep my eye on this thread but I doubt you'll still have the cage when I'm finally ready to bring home a Grey. If someone qualifies for it first or you decide to sell it on craigslist please update the thread!

Best response is no response at all. Don't look at her, don't laugh, don't change your demeanor and eventually it will extinguish itself...mostly.

Ooooooo! New kitchen toys! I've had my eye on an Excalibur dehydrator. I look forward to more additions to this thread about the stuff you make with it!

Maybe dress up a stuffed bird with the harness and take it outside with a lot of fanfare and praise then try working with Phoenix?

Wooo Hooooo! Love it love it LOVE IT! Wish it was longer!

The "Gilburt is home" thread, although long, is a excellent example of what is possible with time, patience, and love. It may also give you an idea of what to expect in the coming weeks or months. There have been lots of rehome success stories floating all over this forum. I beg of you to consider starting a thread in the Rescue Haven chronicling your journey. Your experiences will be valuable for people like me who plan on adopting older birds (when I am ready I plan on adopting a bird who is 15 or older).

Have you tried "Goodnight Moon"?