Babysitting Task Leaves Mom Bird-Brained

Friday, September 18, 2009

Page 15

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Babysitting Task Leaves Mom Bird-Brained

By J’AMY PACHECO

I’ve done a lot of babysitting in my lifetime. Even before I became a parent, my siblings and in-laws frequently left their offspring – and occasionally, a dog or two – in my care.

So when a friend e-mailed to ask if my daughter could babysit their sun conure for a week, I was amenable to the request. I thought maybe it was an exotic sports car, or perhaps a lizard. Either way, I figured it would be painless.

Imagine my surprise when I went online and discovered it is a brightly-colored bird that looks sort of like a parrot. Imagine my further surprise when I read the guest we’d be hosting for a week was of a breed described as “noisy and messy.”

When “Marley” arrived, her owner released her from her cage to make our acquaintance. Birds, it turns out, make your acquaintance by running up your arm, nipping at your earlobes, and pooping down the back of your shirt.

Boo-yah.

After good-byes and a return to her cage, Marley seemed depressed. My daughter decided her depression stemmed from the fact that her cage was quite small, and begged to be allowed to use her own money to buy a bigger cage for the week.

Since the bird appeared to be afraid of the bottom of the tiny cage, I went online to price cages. I nearly gagged (for the second time) when I saw they ran about $300. But her cage had a tiny door that made it really hard to get the bird back inside, so I said I’d check prices at the pet store.

I did, and came away with a large cage with a huge door. We let Marley out while I moved her bird baggage from the small cage to the large cage. The bird ran under the dining room table, and refused to come out.

We finally set the new cage in the middle of the kitchen floor and perched a colorful bird ladder against the side, leading to the open door. Our plan was for the bird to enter the cage on her own, cuing us to quickly close the door behind her.

Did I mention sun conures are also supposed to be really smart? Marley climbed up the ladder, bypassed the door, and used her beak and claws to climb to the top of the cage, where she flapped her useless, clipped wings as though proclaiming herself queen of the world.

It took my husband a pair of gloves, half an hour, and a lot of effort to get Marley inside her cage. We immediately discovered she was afraid of the bottom of this cage, too, and all but one of the perches inside it.

Unfortunately, she was also afraid of her water dish. Having seen the hefty price tag of a similar bird at the pet shop, and being deathly afraid of allowing her to become dehydrated, we started giving Marley water out of a bright blue drinking straw. Fortunately, she loved that.

After a day or two, she started drinking out of her water dish – but only upside-down. Marley would hang from the sides of the cage and dip her beak into the water upside-down. It probably would have been fun to watch if we hadn’t discovered that birds that go potty while clinging to the side of a cage end up launching projectiles. Ewww.

Fortunately, I’d had the good sense to cover the table with a cheap plastic tablecloth before placing Marley’s cage on the table. But I still had to clean up after each new launch.

I hadn’t cleaned up that much bodily waste since my child was in diapers. I guess that was what they meant by the birds being messy.

Marley was normally pretty quiet – as long as she could see us. If I left the room, however, she began to screech at a level that nearly cracked my eardrums, and the windows. That, I realized, was the noisy part.

But each morning, when I crept into the dining room to uncover her cage, she would be waiting. From under her cover, she emitted a little clicking sound that I answered by clicking my tongue. It seemed to make her happy, and I actually felt like she was happy to see me each morning. But I did wonder what we were saying.

Marley’s parents were thrilled with her new cage, and suggested we get a bird. I insisted they take the extra cage home to use for travel.

Now that they have two cages, they’re thinking of getting a second bird. Oh, and did I mention they’re going away for Halloween?

I can hardly wait. I think I’m going to need a new tablecloth.