kevirose

Thank you all for your helpful comments! I feel much better now. The screaming doesn't bother me, I just don't want her to fall. I also thought at first that she had her foot caught, but that wasn't the case. Again, thanks for your help!

I've had my 10 month old CAG for a month now. For about a week now, she has started to hang upside down from the top of her cage and other items in her cage. Sometimes she seems to get scared that she can't right herself and makes this horrible screaming sound, often while hanging from one foot! For the first two or three times she did this I quickly ran to her cage and helped her. Then I saw that as soon as I placed her back onto her perch, she would put herself right back into the same scary situation again. I thought that maybe she was doing this as a ploy for me to give her attention, so I stopped coming to her rescue and saw that she would eventually figure out a way to climb down. Sometimes she'll repeat this four or five times in a row, hanging upside-down from one foot, screaming, and then righting herself. I was just wondering if anyone else has seen this and if I'm maybe doing something wrong. I give my CAG at least two or three hours a day of close time with me, but obviously she would like more time out. Just this morning while I was watching TV, I heard her making the screaming sound and stood up to see if she was hanging upside down. To my surprise, she was just sitting on her perch! Our dog starts barking when she screams, so maybe the CAG is just having fun with us?

Alex, Griffin, and Wart thankfully belong to Dr. Pepperberg. My impression (opinion) is that Dr. Pepperberg is having trouble getting universities to take her work seriously.

My understanding is that most of her funding is through private donations via alexfoundation.org. I think she was also getting some funding through the university. She had a five year contract with them that they reneged on after two years! She will literally be unemployed as of this September. It's really a shame since just a five dollar donation from each person who owns an African Grey would keep her in business.

I visited Dr. Pepperberg yesterday at the Featherlust Bird shop. Her university contract was cut short and she will be unemployed as of this September. Any donations (even small ones) to www.alexfoundation.org would be very much appreciated. Dr. Pepperberg's research has opened many people's eyes to the intelligence of parrots, and it would be a shame to see her work end prematurely.