Many people that I have met tell me they think I am lucky to own so many Parrots.So what are my days like living with 9 parrots, 2 dogs, 2 kittens, too many fish, 1 Guinea Pig and a Partridge in a pare tree?

With so many feathered creatures I have running around my house it reminds me of having little 2 years olds getting into everything. It seems I am always chasing a parrot that just stole a key off the keyboard.

I have 4 Congo African Grays that keep me busy. Their names are Chastity, Brady, Lissa and Alexis. They all get some free time out of their cages, and they like to roam around the house looking for trouble. It’s reminds me of the Chicago Gangsters.

Brady is chasing Chastity around the house to beat him up, Alexis is missing and I can’t figured out where she went to, I am calling for her, but she isn’t responding back. So in the mean time I have to break up the first parrot fight. Meanwhile I am crawling around on the floor looking to see where Alexis is hiding. It never occurred to me to stop crawling around looking down and look up! There she is, up on the top rack of my curtains eating them. I yell at Alexis to get her butt down or she is going into time out. Then I hear Lissa telling Brady to “SHUT UP!” and Brady is just staring at her and not making a sound.

What does a quiet house sound like?

Lissa could make a drunk Sailor blush with her knowledge of every nasty word she knows and will clearly use them in her long sentences. She can talk so sweet when her Daddy Bird (my husband) is around, but I am the B-word when he’s gone. I haven’t figured out who told her that….

Then I have Pepper (Military Macaw) begging to take her morning shower in the tub, so I give in to that and it seems I am the one that gets all wet! I take her out of the shower and she has to shake off the water like a wet dog. So now I have water drops all over my glasses as I try to find my way back to the bird room, giving myself whiplash as I see that Chastity is on top of the toaster dancing and singing “We will Rock You”.

Now that is a normal day.

On a wild day Pepper is screaming because Chastity is sitting on her long tail feathers. I think Chas does that to either hitch a ride or just likes to hear her scream. Lissa is on Daddy Bird’s desk looking for his stash of hidden candy. Alexis is hiding under the desk tearing apart my missing ink pen.

And if things can’t get worse here comes Brady looking for Chastity to start another fight. Now all hell is going to break lose, and I am past being on my last nerve with these kids. I get what is left of my ink pen back from Alexis, there is ink all over her foot and now my hands. She goes running to look to get into something else. Pepper is now missing and in between trying to get Chas away from Brady before the feathers start flying, I have to find a Macaw that has a beak the size of Texas that loves to eat my wood trimming around the windows.

Lissa can’t find Daddy Bird’s candy so she figures it time to clear his desk off of everything that she can pick up and throw on the floor. Meanwhile, Alexis and Chas have ganged up to open my makeup case, and are busy tossing everything on the floor and playing with my lipstick and brushes! I chase them away and put the makeup back in the case. It does no good to secure the latch because Chas learned weeks ago how to open it!

Ok, now I have found the Macaw! I figured she can take a time out. Now I have to find Lissa and Alexis who have worked their way to the bathroom and are sitting on the waste basket and just partially eaten my soft padded toilet seat. I assure you that you would not want to sit on that again!

OK, that was the last straw. I scream “TIME OUT” and everyone goes running! No problem for me, I grab up 2 Parrots at a time and put their butts in a locked cage. Once they are all caught and locked down I go check to see how many new gray hairs I have.

I need peace and quiet, so I go outside to my beautiful flower gardens and ponds that I have worked so hard to take care of. It feels nice outside, and things are quiet, I feel so much better now. I bend over to pull some weeds out of my flower bed, everything looks so perfect, until I moved a pot of flowers and came face to face with a snake.

I am screaming bloody murder and running like hell back into the house.

There is only one quiet place in my house that doesn’t have a bird in it, and that is the bathroom. So I sit on the edge of the tub, since I have half of a toilet seat left, and I think about this lady’s sob story about her unruly 6 kids and I wonder which is worse, her 6 human kids or my 9 feathered kids.

I wonder if she would trade me.

Sapphyre,
Certified Avian Specialist