Pickles The Parrot: A Humorous Look At Life With An African Grey (15 page)

Pickles is getting happier and happier about
us leaving the room he is in. We’re developing a bit of a complex
about it and feeling a little snubbed but it’s working to our
advantage. Pickles has make it a common practice to turn his back
on us out of disdain for our behavior but now he’s snapping “Go
bye-bye” and pointedly facing the other way. So now, when he gets
cranky, it’s easy to make him happy by telling
him
bye-bye
and finding something else to do. The happy, loud animations are a
sure indication that he prefers his own company to ours.

Most of the time, he’s happy to entertain
himself. He can talk to himself for hours and shows his amusement
with head bobs and chuckles. He likes to practice his sounds and
will pick up any new ones he hears in seconds. He doesn’t practice
his words by mumbling to himself, as many African Greys do, he just
spits them out when you least expect it. He’s very good at
stringing whole sentences together and the longest sentence he has
spoken contained 16 words, although I can’t recall what he said at
the time. An example of a typical shorter sentence would be “Don’t
you wanna eat some potato supper with your beak?” or “Let’s go
party in the aviary and listen to some music” or “Step up and let’s
go for a walk and sit on the freezer”. He is perfectly capable of
inserting different words into a sentence to indicate what he
wants, such as telling us what he wants to eat with his beak or
going for a walk to get a snack instead of going to the freezer.
What he hasn’t grasped yet, is that eating with ‘your’ beak isn’t
the same as eating with ‘my’ beak but then; we haven’t really
explained that to him.

At last count, 3 or 4 years ago, Pickles had
about 100 words in his vocabulary. As he picks up new words, he
will drop others. Sometimes he will drop words or phrases for
months or years then suddenly decide to use them again, with a
vengeance. I don’t know why some words or phrases are more
desirable to him than others, or why there are some things he
refuses to say at all. There are many words he understands but does
not repeat. If you mention a walnut he goes nuts in anticipation
but he has never spoken the word.

I think the only consonant he has trouble
with is ‘v’ but he does say ‘very’. I should actually listen closer
to see if he is substituting. I have a younger brother who
stuttered in his early years and he would substitute consonants
that he had trouble pronouncing but he’d talk so quickly that it
wasn’t always noticeable. In the beginning, Pickles had a bit of a
problem saying anything with an ‘s’ without whistling but now it
only sounds like a lisp. And only when the ‘s’ is at the end of a
sentence, not at the beginning.

Neil and I have found that we don’t always
hear Pickles’ new words and phrases, maybe because we don’t pay
enough attention or maybe because we just expect certain words to
come out of his mouth. Often people will laugh about something he
just said and repeat it to us and we tell them that Pickles doesn’t
say that particular work or phrase, that they just imagined it. But
lo and behold, at some point later, we actually hear it. It was
like that whenever Neil worked out of town and I was home alone
with Pickles. Neil would come home and comment on new words Pickles
had picked up, words I hadn’t even noticed.

I’ll digress for a moment about Pickles’
whistling. As I mentioned, I don’t whistle very well and sometimes
I can’t hit certain notes in a whistling song. Pickles seems to
have a natural talent and an ear for music because he will learn a
song that I whistle and actually insert the proper notes! I have
never heard him sing off key.

I won’t lie to you and tell you that Pickles
talks coherently every day, all day long and entertains us
non-stop. I started writing the PickleStories for Good Bird
Magazine a few years ago and sometimes I’m worried that I won’t
have a story for the deadline. He does amusing things everyday but
it’s not always things I can put into words. Also, I prefer the
stories to be somewhat of a cognitive nature and sometimes he just
babbles like a toddler who’s learning and practicing words. He’s
extremely articulate when it comes to getting what he wants and
he’s good at initiating conversations and following through but
only when it suits him.

I wouldn’t say Pickles is smarter than other
parrots and I think the only reason he’s so vocal is because he’s
so demanding. It’s important for him that everybody is at his beck
and call so it’s to his advantage to speak well. Words work for
him. Communication is important to him whereas some parrots prefer
physical contact, playing or cuddling with their people or just
playing on their own. Like people, all birds are individual and
Pickles just happens to be a very vocally social bird with
tyrannical tendencies. I mean, what is a King without a voice?!

Every PickleStory I have written has been
initiated by Pickles, rather than acting on cue. We have resisted
training him any tricks and the only way he increases his
vocabulary is through normal conversation with him, or between Neil
and I. Not to say we will never teach him tricks because it would
be great interaction and a good way to keep his mind occupied.

It can be difficult to write PickleStories in
the sense that I can’t describe his inflections, his tones. He
talks in several voices—mine, Neil’s, his own and he has his happy,
sad, angry, demanding voice and his very, very sweet voice. What’s
hard to put into words are all his antics and behavior. Most of his
shenanigans don’t get written about but I keep a rough diary of
almost everything he does.

He knows how to ask for different food items
or things he wants to do, such as going for a walk, going outside
to the aviary, listening to music or for us to sing a song. When he
asks for music, it must be his kind of music otherwise he gives you
the buzzer. He knows what’s scary to him and tells us with both
words and actions. He only says “Good morning” in the morning and
only asks for his lights off at night. At 5:00pm, on the dot, he
asks for his supper. If he’s somewhere he doesn’t want to be, he
asks to go home.

He seems to understand “Be right back”. If we
say it when we’re leaving, it makes him happy however, if we say,
“Bye-bye, be gone long time” he will often give us a little whine
of disappointment—especially if it involves Daddy. If Neil’s not
home, Pickles will ask, “Daddy’s home?” and if I respond, “He’ll be
right back” Pickles shows his happiness with hoots and whistles.
But if I say “Daddy be gone long time” he will repeat as a
question, “Gone long time?” then fluff up and pout. Pickles will
often turn his back on us and scamper away saying “Bye-bye, be
right back” but he never tells us “Bye-bye, be gone long time”. Is
it because he knows he’s not going to be gone for long? Hard to
say.

It’s only when he’s ready for bed that he’ll
tell us to turn his light off but he’ll also use the same words a
few minutes later when he’s ready to be covered for the night. He
might not know the difference but he’s clever enough to know that
both make it dark for him. He doesn’t know the difference between
pop and juice but he knows it’s not water (he’s not allowed pop).
He doesn’t know the difference between pudding and jello, he thinks
anything served to him on a spoon is pudding but if you serve him
mashed potato on a spoon he will say “mmmmm, potato”. He loves peas
but if he asks for a bean and you hand him a pea pod, he’ll through
it in your face. If his water dish is soiled with food scraps,
he’ll ask for fresh water and if you don’t give him fresh water
with each meal, he will politely ask for it before he dines.

Pickles knows the difference between a
question and a statement. Lately, he’s added the “I” to things like
“wanna snack” or “wanna go for a walk” but usually it’s the later.
When he’s demanding something he’ll say, “wanna snack” but if we’re
busy and he’s not sure if we’ll give him what he wants, he’ll
politely ask “Wanna snack?” Same words but shows the difference
between ‘Can I?” and “I want.”

One of the PickleStories I wrote for Good
Bird Magazine makes a good example for both Pickles’ understanding
of teasing and what is scary. This is what I wrote…

Pickles has this thing he likes to
do—pretending to fall over. He picks the thinnest branch on his
play stand so that he can wrap his talons around it loosely, like
little hoops, which enables him to fall upside down then flap his
wings to get back up. Sometimes he just hoops his talons and flies
round and round the branch. Today he is particularly animated about
it.

A blood-curdling scream pierces the air and
wild wing flapping sends dust and downy white feathers swirling
through the room. Our living room must look like a snow globe from
the street. Pickles sees he now has my attention.

“Oh no!” he exclaims. His eyes are wide and
have the look of fear as he begins to fall backwards, in slow
motion. He pretends to be trying to fight gravity but to no avail.
He falls, clinging to the branch, upside down. “That’s scary,” he
informs me.

“Yeah, right” I say, and go back to reading
my book as he flaps his way back to the top of the perch.

Suddenly he’s screaming “No, no, no, no, no!”
and I look up just as he’s falling backwards again. He hangs there,
looking at me. “Ooops” he says.

Once again, he flaps to right himself on the
perch then immediately goes “Ack!” and falls again. “Upside down
bird” he says, “Scary.”

“Pickles…” I start to say, but he interrupts
with “Get back up!”

“That’s just what I was going to say—get back
up and stop being a little faker,” I told him.

As he flapped to get back up, he flapped all
the way around the branch and ended up upside down again. Flapped
again, this time doing several laps around the branch but at some
point he lost his grip—and it happened as he was in the upside down
position, resulting in a upside down, flying bird smacking head
first into the wall behind, landing in a crumpled heap on the
floor.

I leapt to his rescue; sure that he must have
hurt himself. By the time I got there, he was upright, beady eyes
looking up at me, one talon in the air, asking to ‘Step up”.

As I picked him up, he quietly informed me
“That’s scary.”

“I believe you this time Pickles”.

Clearly, he was teasing me. He was
pretending
to fall over, he was
pretending
it was
scary and in the end, it
was
scary which he indicated in an
entirely different way than when he was teasing earlier. I send my
stories out to friends through email and they send them on to
friends of theirs. A friend of a friend (Eliza Firth) obviously
‘got’ it and wrote, “
Okay, there are other stories that are
funnier, and somewhere his smart-ass remarks are more clever, but
this is the best demonstration I’ve ever heard of that he
understands language in a really subtle and nuanced way. That’s
scary
.”

Those of you who are reading this, and have
African Greys of your own, are probably aware of Dr. Irene
Pepperberg, her African Grey named Alex and her research over the
years. Until Alex’s death in 2007, he demonstrated abilities that
scientists thought impossible for birds. He could not only speak in
context but could distinguish between colors, shapes and sizes and
tell you what each item was, such as ‘square, four corners, blue’
and say which item was ‘bigger’ or ‘smaller’. He could count and he
could identify different materials such as paper, wool and wood
etc.

Is Pickles as smart as Alex? I don’t know. We
don’t work with him and test his intelligence however, we see
amazing glimpses of cleverness each day. Once, I was humming while
tidying the living room and Pickles asked, “Is that a song?”

“Sorta” I said, “It’s called humming.”

“What’s in a song?” Pickles asked.

“Lyrics and melody” I told him.

He gave me the raspberry, as if to say he
didn’t believe me so I said, “Then you tell ME what’s in a
song”.

“Music?” he asked tentatively.

“BINGO!” I said, shocked that he would come
up with that.

Then, after I blurted out “Bingo” he told me
“What a good song!” because we always sing “Bingo Was Her Name
Oh”.

While we’re on the subject of songs, Pickles
once asked “Wanna sing a beak?” and I told him “You can sing a
song, or you can sing
with
your beak but you can’t sing a
beak”. He responded with “That’s crap”.

You can see by the last exchange that that
he’s just being silly and saying words that don’t really go
together but maybe he just made a mistake and meant to ask, “Wanna
sing with your beak?” which is something he says all the time. Who
knows? What I do know is that he doesn’t always make sense. And
sometimes, I think he’s just screwing with me. Like the time he
kept calling “Gary…Gary…Gaaaaarrrrryyyyyy”.

“Who’s Gary?” I ask

“Huh?” Pickles answers.

“I said, who’s Gary?” I repeat.

“Scary?” Pickles asks

“Huh?” I ask.

“Scary” Pickles tells me.

“Is he?” I ask.

“Huh?” Pickles asks.

“You said he’s scary Pickles. Is he?

“Gary?” Pickles asks.

“Yeah” I respond”

“Huh?” Pickles asks.

“Jeez Pickles, who the heck are you talking
about?”

“Gary” He says.

“You’re driving me crazy Pickles”.

“Is it scary?” asks Pickles.

I guess that was Pickles’ version of “Who’s
On First?”

If Pickles really wants something, he asks in
clear and simple terms. If he’s angry with you, he makes no bones
about it and doesn’t mince words. He’ll tell you to ‘stop it’ and
he’ll call you names. If he’s happy with you, he lets you know by
telling you you’re ‘good’. They say you shouldn’t anthropomorphize
with parrots, that you can’t apply human behavior or emotions to
birds but Pickles is involved in almost every aspect of our lives,
we spend almost all our time with him, and our experience is that
they do have similar emotions. One day we’ll write an article about
it because we don’t think this has been properly researched. It’s
obvious to us when Pickles is angry, sad, frustrated or happy. His
body language, actions (and reactions afterwards) indicate that he
knows what teasing is. For instance, any time you ask him what a
dog says he will bark but the last time, when I asked, he cawed
like a crow. I said no, asked him again and got the same response.
This happened several times and each response came with head bobs
and chuckles. He knew better but he was interested in our
reactions. When I told him he was a goof and walked away, he
barked.