Marcus and the Guitar

[MarcusCAG]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm posting this new thread at my husband's request (honestly).

 

But something interesting happened with us with our Marcus tonight. Not a 'good' interesting, really, but I can't say it was really 'bad' either. While we were spending time with him and Beaker in the boys' room (Beaker was in his cage at this point, Marcus was on the floor), my husband decided to pick up his guitar which has been slowly decaying in the one corner of the room. I've picked away at it a few times in front of the boys before, but my skills are long gone and it's out of tune and so not much came of it. My husband, though, got the guitar to sound rather nice--much to Beaker's delight, at least--and he started improvising a bit...

 

Marcus started up with his little 'hissy fits' again, slapping his foot around and making garbled noises, but this time he didn't "yell" and he kept going with it all. As in, my husband kept playing the guitar and as we watched, Marcus kept mumbling and grumbling and saying strange fragments of words that he occasionally punctuated with an upraised foot, opening and closing his toes quickly. Even after my husband stopped playing for a bit (because we kept looking at each other like, how did we trigger this?) Marcus continued to mumble angrily at us. It became very apparent that he really, truly was trying to tell us what had happened, what he had seen or was remembering. In that respect I personally found it all a bit 'creepy' because it was like being involved with a mystery and you realize suddenly that everything's so much bigger than you had initially thought, the plot is that much deeper and you have no way to really understand it at this point.

 

So, now that I've explained all that... I just asked my hubby what he wants me to share next and he asked me to ask all of you how you think the music might be involved? Personally, I'm thinking maybe Marcus was exposed to a lot of guitar-playing in his other home or something, but I think my husband maybe wants your thoughts on music with greys in general? Either way, he asked me to post this and share it all with you. I'm just happy that we got Marcus calmed down after a bit, and when he finally was on his door-perch again with me getting ready to 'put him to bed' for the night, he wanted lots of tickles and was very affectionate. So he ended things tonight in a more emotionally happy space, thankfully.

 

Again, thanks in advance for any and all input...

[judygram]

I think we can safely say that maybe a guitar was in Marcus's past since he had a strong reaction to it or maybe he just didn't much care for the sound of it, who knows what goes on in a grey mind but it would be interesting to see if he has another similar reaction if you try it again, wouldn't it be great if we could understand grey speak.

[Azzie]

Oh that poor bird, having so many bad memories triggered by such innocent actions. I so hope he will learn and understand that that time is behind him now, and that he can let go and relax.

Keep up the good work with Marcus.

[MarcusCAG]

Thank you both for your comments and concern... when my hubby was at work earlier today I emailed him and let him know what you said, and he got all upset and said he didn't want to play the guitar for Marcus anymore if he was going to pull that type of reaction out of him again with it. I personally think maybe the guitar is the type of thing that can help, by getting Marcus to try and communicate his feelings with us a bit more and everything (like therapy). But we'll just take it slowly, I guess, and I can't make my husband play for the boys if he doesn't really want to.