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I'd like to quickly introduce my slightly larger house mates, Simon and Garfunkel.
My idea had been for several years that once I had found my own forever home - I was looking to buy a place at the time - I'd buy a couple of African Greys to train. I was deliberately not looking for rescues there because they were just a bit too big and strong for my taste to handle when I didn't know what kinds of behavioural problems they might come with.
Things came differently because one day in January afternoon I got a call. The gist of it was "we have two African Greys that have been removed from an abusive home, they need a place to stay with a person who can afford the vet." They were very up front about that, they were going to be trouble and they were going to be expensive. The main reason they called me wasn't that at the time I had 15+ years in experience with rescue birds, it was mostly that they knew I could cover the bills. And boy did we have bills!
I talked to my mother on the phone that night and said it couldn't hurt to have a look at them… right? She laughed and said "yeah, right". She knew exactly that the moment I'd see them I'd take them home.
[please skip the next paragraph if you don't want details on exactly what condition they were in when I got them and why!]
Long story short, they were a male and a female, the female naked but for the head and with assorted wounds in various stages of healing, the male with bald spots and going into "attack" position the moment he saw people coming in. They'd been taken from a two-bedroom apartment where they shared a broom cupboard sized room (no cage, just a perch) with seven (!) cats. The apartment also housed a small pug dog, a cage stuffed full with budgies, a bunch of rodents and two reptiles. The lady of the house had wanted cool birds to cuddle, and boy did she cuddle them… They inexpertly clipped their wings, she grabbed them to hug… the male became very aggressive very fast, which saved him from the worst of the physical damage. He "just" had some damage to a leg and his claws had grown to where they bent back and cut into the soles of his feet. The hen was the sweetest little thing even at that time, amazing, all things considered. She was somewhat scratched up and had both fresh and (badly) healed fractures in her wings, among others. They both looked about three quarters starved.
[End of paragraph]
On 2 February this year it's been six years since they moved in with me. We've moved one more time since, and they are both very beautiful - and hopefully happy - birds now. From the beginning, even when I'm sure we were hurting her a lot treating her various injuries, Garfunkel has been soaking up all affection she can get. She's an extremely cuddly bird. She talks, though sometimes her vocabulary is odd. She says "bright" for "water", for one thing. She has a problem with stress and will start plucking again if she feels she's expected to "perform", so beyond some basic behaviour (no biting, no eating the furniture, no droppings in the living room) we take what she offers and leave it at that, though sometimes we manage to teach her a trick by turning into a game. Such as paying for her own waffle (sans ice cream) at the ice cream parlour down the street (handing over a coin), which she loves and where she's loved. Due to the extensive damage to her wings, she cannot and will never fly. She can flap and catch herself when she slips - my living room goes across two floors of the house in height, so it is somewhat relevant for us safety-wise that she doesn't drop like a stone - but she can't fly "up" or, really, forward. She loves all things bright and colourful, moving and noisy. That means, first and foremost, cars and kids. My sisters both are day care teachers. One of them takes her along for a morning now and then. If she sees or hears her coming, Garfunkel will immediately climb into her carrier and chirp up "Along!" She knows my sister doesn't carry her on her shoulder like I do
I get the "along!" pretty much every time she realises I'm about to leave the house, and she'll wait by the door like a little grey doggie. Too bad really that she can't "along" every time I go out … she'd love that. She drinks from a bottle if someone holds it up for her and from a cup (or bottle cap) that she holds in her foot. She runs her own bath in the sink. She has a vocabulary of maybe 30 words that she uses with meaning (some sensible, like "along!" - probably from "Want to come along?", "give!" when she wants to have an object, "get off!" for "go away", "fruit" for any kind of food, "cuddlecuddle" - the obvious; others more along the funny side, though I have been able to reconstruct where she got most of them from - "bright" for water, "rafters" for "no biting", some that I am not sure I want to know what she's thinking about ("fruit" can also mean "budgies") and a lot more that she just chatters for fun.
She loves to watch TV and she even has a favourite actor whom she will greet the moment he walks onto the screen, comment every line of and call after when he leaves again.
For whatever reason, she does not seem to know any fear of people, cats or dogs. All three are automatically considered her friends and she'll try to play with them. She doesn't get exposed to cats anymore outside of a vet's waiting room, when everyone is in carriers anyway, but she will try to chat up random strangers and their dogs outside…
Simon was a bit of a different matter. Scared and angry, that described him. He'd attack before anyone could hurt him. I suspected an African Grey can break a finger if he tries, and I was right. For the first year and a half I used thick leather gloves to protect my hands whenever I had to get near him. He doesn't talk, but he knows every single bleep, beep and chirp around the house. He responds to instant messengers in their own "language". His claws still grow all crooked and need to be cut regularly. When we get visitors, even now he disappears. He'll sit at the highest point of the rafters and look down, and pretend not to be there. He loves honey and is very inventive in getting at and into the honey pot. It wasn't until last year that he came and held out his head for a scratch to me for the first time. Boy, was I surprised! He's actually become quite cuddly since, at least while we're along. I fear he's kind of lonely, since Garfunkel seems to think she's a little human rather than a bird. Unfortunately, he's not very sociable even with other Greys. We've had two attempts at bringing in a "proper" mate for him (Garfunkel will not actually let him touch her to cuddle or preen) and he went into full attack mode both times the moment he was in a room with the other bird with no bars between - even though he'd been friendly enough all the time before while one or both of them were caged. We're still working to find a solution there…
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Garfunkel feeling accomplished... Simon is not so sure:
![]()
We stealed food! Out of the Halloweek Bowl! (obviously I swapped those for proper bird treats after taking the picture!)
![]()
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I can read!
![]()
And write!
![]()
And we have the best bird bath ever!
![]()
My idea had been for several years that once I had found my own forever home - I was looking to buy a place at the time - I'd buy a couple of African Greys to train. I was deliberately not looking for rescues there because they were just a bit too big and strong for my taste to handle when I didn't know what kinds of behavioural problems they might come with.
Things came differently because one day in January afternoon I got a call. The gist of it was "we have two African Greys that have been removed from an abusive home, they need a place to stay with a person who can afford the vet." They were very up front about that, they were going to be trouble and they were going to be expensive. The main reason they called me wasn't that at the time I had 15+ years in experience with rescue birds, it was mostly that they knew I could cover the bills. And boy did we have bills!
I talked to my mother on the phone that night and said it couldn't hurt to have a look at them… right? She laughed and said "yeah, right". She knew exactly that the moment I'd see them I'd take them home.
[please skip the next paragraph if you don't want details on exactly what condition they were in when I got them and why!]
Long story short, they were a male and a female, the female naked but for the head and with assorted wounds in various stages of healing, the male with bald spots and going into "attack" position the moment he saw people coming in. They'd been taken from a two-bedroom apartment where they shared a broom cupboard sized room (no cage, just a perch) with seven (!) cats. The apartment also housed a small pug dog, a cage stuffed full with budgies, a bunch of rodents and two reptiles. The lady of the house had wanted cool birds to cuddle, and boy did she cuddle them… They inexpertly clipped their wings, she grabbed them to hug… the male became very aggressive very fast, which saved him from the worst of the physical damage. He "just" had some damage to a leg and his claws had grown to where they bent back and cut into the soles of his feet. The hen was the sweetest little thing even at that time, amazing, all things considered. She was somewhat scratched up and had both fresh and (badly) healed fractures in her wings, among others. They both looked about three quarters starved.
[End of paragraph]
On 2 February this year it's been six years since they moved in with me. We've moved one more time since, and they are both very beautiful - and hopefully happy - birds now. From the beginning, even when I'm sure we were hurting her a lot treating her various injuries, Garfunkel has been soaking up all affection she can get. She's an extremely cuddly bird. She talks, though sometimes her vocabulary is odd. She says "bright" for "water", for one thing. She has a problem with stress and will start plucking again if she feels she's expected to "perform", so beyond some basic behaviour (no biting, no eating the furniture, no droppings in the living room) we take what she offers and leave it at that, though sometimes we manage to teach her a trick by turning into a game. Such as paying for her own waffle (sans ice cream) at the ice cream parlour down the street (handing over a coin), which she loves and where she's loved. Due to the extensive damage to her wings, she cannot and will never fly. She can flap and catch herself when she slips - my living room goes across two floors of the house in height, so it is somewhat relevant for us safety-wise that she doesn't drop like a stone - but she can't fly "up" or, really, forward. She loves all things bright and colourful, moving and noisy. That means, first and foremost, cars and kids. My sisters both are day care teachers. One of them takes her along for a morning now and then. If she sees or hears her coming, Garfunkel will immediately climb into her carrier and chirp up "Along!" She knows my sister doesn't carry her on her shoulder like I do
I get the "along!" pretty much every time she realises I'm about to leave the house, and she'll wait by the door like a little grey doggie. Too bad really that she can't "along" every time I go out … she'd love that. She drinks from a bottle if someone holds it up for her and from a cup (or bottle cap) that she holds in her foot. She runs her own bath in the sink. She has a vocabulary of maybe 30 words that she uses with meaning (some sensible, like "along!" - probably from "Want to come along?", "give!" when she wants to have an object, "get off!" for "go away", "fruit" for any kind of food, "cuddlecuddle" - the obvious; others more along the funny side, though I have been able to reconstruct where she got most of them from - "bright" for water, "rafters" for "no biting", some that I am not sure I want to know what she's thinking about ("fruit" can also mean "budgies") and a lot more that she just chatters for fun. She loves to watch TV and she even has a favourite actor whom she will greet the moment he walks onto the screen, comment every line of and call after when he leaves again.
For whatever reason, she does not seem to know any fear of people, cats or dogs. All three are automatically considered her friends and she'll try to play with them. She doesn't get exposed to cats anymore outside of a vet's waiting room, when everyone is in carriers anyway, but she will try to chat up random strangers and their dogs outside…
Simon was a bit of a different matter. Scared and angry, that described him. He'd attack before anyone could hurt him. I suspected an African Grey can break a finger if he tries, and I was right. For the first year and a half I used thick leather gloves to protect my hands whenever I had to get near him. He doesn't talk, but he knows every single bleep, beep and chirp around the house. He responds to instant messengers in their own "language". His claws still grow all crooked and need to be cut regularly. When we get visitors, even now he disappears. He'll sit at the highest point of the rafters and look down, and pretend not to be there. He loves honey and is very inventive in getting at and into the honey pot. It wasn't until last year that he came and held out his head for a scratch to me for the first time. Boy, was I surprised! He's actually become quite cuddly since, at least while we're along. I fear he's kind of lonely, since Garfunkel seems to think she's a little human rather than a bird. Unfortunately, he's not very sociable even with other Greys. We've had two attempts at bringing in a "proper" mate for him (Garfunkel will not actually let him touch her to cuddle or preen) and he went into full attack mode both times the moment he was in a room with the other bird with no bars between - even though he'd been friendly enough all the time before while one or both of them were caged. We're still working to find a solution there…
Garfunkel feeling accomplished... Simon is not so sure:
We stealed food! Out of the Halloweek Bowl! (obviously I swapped those for proper bird treats after taking the picture!)
I can read!
And write!
And we have the best bird bath ever!
