The weekend was full of new and exciting things for Zeba and I; some not so pleasant than others...
i allowed him a lot of out time this weekend from his cage. i feel comfortable with him walking around the ground near me, although i am still unable to have him step up onto my hand/wrist/arm. i dont think he is ready for this, for reasons only he knows, but he surely allows me to get close to him when he is free and roaming around the bedroom.
saturday, i let him out and he went on the floor from his cage. i sectioned off a space that is the length of our bedroom, but about 3 - 4 feet wide. i placed a few "toys" at different distances from his cage - a roll of paper towel, an acrylic bird toy shaped into a person with moveable limbs, a couple of empty plastic water bottles (16oz size), a wooden perch, a plastic nut/bolt bird foot toy and....me. i usually laid down and did some sudoku or crossword puzzles as he did his exploration.
he is very calm when he walks around. he goes exploring from one end of his play area to the other just to see what's around. then he will come to me to see what im doing. but, if my husband walks into the room and gets too close for zeba's comfort, zeba will launch himself in the air about 2 - 3 feet and try to attack him. it was very alarming because his wings are actually cut but he had such powerful flying muscles from years of being able to fly that he could jump so high and far! we have to work on calming him around my husband (it could probably be that my husband was moving to quickly in zeba's direction). with early spring upon us, this will be quite a difficult task and may have to wait till the raging hormones subside somewhat.
zeba preened my hair a couple of times...i think i will have to finally go for a hair cut so that he doesn't get too tangled up in my hair. i like it shorter anyways.
he has also nibbled on my ear...i would normally NOT do this with an amazon - especially not with my own amazon - he's papa's BIG baby. LOL. but zeba was being very calm, no aggressiveness was being shown and he was very careful.
zeba has also bitten a hole in my sock..i guess he is trying to help me get rid of some extra "skin"?
he still loves to talk when he hears people talking back to him. and the more you talk to him, the more he emphasizes some of his words, which makes it sound like he's sad and wants you to visit. what a drama "queen"!
also, like i wrote previously, we found out that he can answer phones! who needs an answering machine?! it was really weird because the way we found out was after my husband's cell phone rang - and his ring is not the normal telephone ring..its some kind of song medley. anyways, it went off and a distinct "hello?" came from our bedroom. it was short, solemn, no real feeling in it...it was a completely different voice. after steffen got off of his phone, he came to me and asked "did zeba just say hello?" i said YES. so we tested him out again. i called our regular phone line and when it rang, zeba again said the "hello?". we thought it was soooooo funny so we did a BAD thing and called our phone again a couple of times for it to ring just to hear zeba say "hello?" in that voice.
sunday, i decided it was shower time for zeba. my plan was to lure zeba into his travel carrier with a walnut and lock him in there until i got to the bathtub. well, the way it went was he stepped on to the carrier and as he tried to reach for the nut, i tried to close it, but he started to flinch backwards so i just carried the open carrier to the bathtub, set the carrier down in the tub and turned on the water. i deflected most of the water so that the water would spray lightly on top of him. i can't say for certain if he liked the shower, but he had his wings spread most of the time, he tried jumping around a couple of times and he talked up a storm. he didn't preen his feathers like my amazon would during a shower when he likes it, so i don't know how zeba took it. he kept to the sides of the carrier so after the shower, i just carried him on the carrier back to his cage. (thank goodness that carrier has holes all over the place so i could drain the water!)
and what a difference a little shower makes..it lasted all of about 10 - 15 minutes and after zeba dried off, he was gleaming like a shiny new penny! his feathers were much softer and his lower body and tail feathers had an iridescent sheen to them - much like my own amazon. zeba is really a beautiful bird, but after the shower, wow!
well, that was our fun 2nd weekend together. i must admit that it is getting tougher and tougher to come to the realization that i will one day part with this guy when the right adoptive family comes along...he is SUCH a great bird! we just have to work on that itsy bitsy aggression problem between him and my husband....:-/
i allowed him a lot of out time this weekend from his cage. i feel comfortable with him walking around the ground near me, although i am still unable to have him step up onto my hand/wrist/arm. i dont think he is ready for this, for reasons only he knows, but he surely allows me to get close to him when he is free and roaming around the bedroom.
saturday, i let him out and he went on the floor from his cage. i sectioned off a space that is the length of our bedroom, but about 3 - 4 feet wide. i placed a few "toys" at different distances from his cage - a roll of paper towel, an acrylic bird toy shaped into a person with moveable limbs, a couple of empty plastic water bottles (16oz size), a wooden perch, a plastic nut/bolt bird foot toy and....me. i usually laid down and did some sudoku or crossword puzzles as he did his exploration.
he is very calm when he walks around. he goes exploring from one end of his play area to the other just to see what's around. then he will come to me to see what im doing. but, if my husband walks into the room and gets too close for zeba's comfort, zeba will launch himself in the air about 2 - 3 feet and try to attack him. it was very alarming because his wings are actually cut but he had such powerful flying muscles from years of being able to fly that he could jump so high and far! we have to work on calming him around my husband (it could probably be that my husband was moving to quickly in zeba's direction). with early spring upon us, this will be quite a difficult task and may have to wait till the raging hormones subside somewhat.
zeba preened my hair a couple of times...i think i will have to finally go for a hair cut so that he doesn't get too tangled up in my hair. i like it shorter anyways.
he has also nibbled on my ear...i would normally NOT do this with an amazon - especially not with my own amazon - he's papa's BIG baby. LOL. but zeba was being very calm, no aggressiveness was being shown and he was very careful.
zeba has also bitten a hole in my sock..i guess he is trying to help me get rid of some extra "skin"?
he still loves to talk when he hears people talking back to him. and the more you talk to him, the more he emphasizes some of his words, which makes it sound like he's sad and wants you to visit. what a drama "queen"!
also, like i wrote previously, we found out that he can answer phones! who needs an answering machine?! it was really weird because the way we found out was after my husband's cell phone rang - and his ring is not the normal telephone ring..its some kind of song medley. anyways, it went off and a distinct "hello?" came from our bedroom. it was short, solemn, no real feeling in it...it was a completely different voice. after steffen got off of his phone, he came to me and asked "did zeba just say hello?" i said YES. so we tested him out again. i called our regular phone line and when it rang, zeba again said the "hello?". we thought it was soooooo funny so we did a BAD thing and called our phone again a couple of times for it to ring just to hear zeba say "hello?" in that voice.
sunday, i decided it was shower time for zeba. my plan was to lure zeba into his travel carrier with a walnut and lock him in there until i got to the bathtub. well, the way it went was he stepped on to the carrier and as he tried to reach for the nut, i tried to close it, but he started to flinch backwards so i just carried the open carrier to the bathtub, set the carrier down in the tub and turned on the water. i deflected most of the water so that the water would spray lightly on top of him. i can't say for certain if he liked the shower, but he had his wings spread most of the time, he tried jumping around a couple of times and he talked up a storm. he didn't preen his feathers like my amazon would during a shower when he likes it, so i don't know how zeba took it. he kept to the sides of the carrier so after the shower, i just carried him on the carrier back to his cage. (thank goodness that carrier has holes all over the place so i could drain the water!)
and what a difference a little shower makes..it lasted all of about 10 - 15 minutes and after zeba dried off, he was gleaming like a shiny new penny! his feathers were much softer and his lower body and tail feathers had an iridescent sheen to them - much like my own amazon. zeba is really a beautiful bird, but after the shower, wow!
well, that was our fun 2nd weekend together. i must admit that it is getting tougher and tougher to come to the realization that i will one day part with this guy when the right adoptive family comes along...he is SUCH a great bird! we just have to work on that itsy bitsy aggression problem between him and my husband....:-/
posted by kate franz mickaboo.org at
12:19 PM
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