assegaai

My Timneh African Grey somehow got hold of a mothball (naphthalene ball). I always give him a kiss on his beak when I pick him up and immediately smelled the naphthalene. I tried to open his beak, but Assegaai realised he is about to loose his new-found treasure and clamped his beak shut. As I prised his beak open and tried to get hold of the poison, it crumbled. I got pieces out but wasn't sure if it was everything. I rinsed his mouth with water, and called our vet. He found out that with naphtalene poisoning the best is to give activated charcoal (the sort you buy at pharmacies). He gave Assegaai 4 cc of charcoal with a tube into his gullet. Assegaai was fine, and the only side-effects were his potty was pitch black for a day!

Thank you! Assegaai's cage is nice and big with lots of space for him to play and explore. I put new Mopane or lemon tree branches in there from time to time. He loves being outside, but when he gets lonely, he comes inside and have a look at what we are up to or calls for a scratch session. I cannot remember how it was without him in our lives!

Oops, let me try again

OK, got it. That is his cage on the outside of the study. He sleeps inside on a platform on top of the cupboard in a wooden box which he is very attached to. When I had to take him to our research camp in the bush, I took his "bed" along and he was quite happy.

I would like to post a pic of his cage. How do I do that?

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I left my laptop computer open one day when leaving the study for a few minutes and when I got back, Assegaai had flown to my table and very happily destroyed the keyboard - there were keys lying all over the place! Now I have to use an external keyboard as some of the keys just never worked again. Assegaai looked very pleased, and no doubt, had great fun!

Wow, what an amazing picture of Ecko! Thanks for the welcome. Assegaai only calls Morsie (the dog) and then whistles like we do when we call her. It is amazing how Assegaai can say the "M" and the "o" so perfectly. I haven't really been concentrating on teaching him to talk - I love his parrot-babbling and whistling his own tunes. He lives in a big cage outside our study window and can come into the study when we have the window open, or otherwise he is with me or my husband, so I think he is so busy having fun, that he doesn't have a lot of time to spend on learning to talk.

Assegaai means 'spear' in Afrikaans. We didn't know whether he was a mamma-gaai or a pappa-gaai (papegaai is parrot in Afrikaans) se we decided he must be an assegaai! I got him from a friend who has a breeding pair, when he was 8 weeks old. I don't have any other birds, only a dog called Morsie (a Maun-pavement special) who treads very carefully when Assegaai is around, and has never tried to catch him if he flies to the ground, although Morsie will chase everything else on our plot like francolins and tree squirrels. I am still finding my way around this site and will post some pictures soon.

Hi. My name is Hanlie. I live in Botswana and am an ecologist. I have an African Grey Timneh who is 2 years old and his name is Assegaai.