Lying Lou

You guys remember Lou right?

"Hello!"

Our beautiful Green-wing Macaw that wants to eat me in his spare time? I was not the only woman Lou had no use for. In fact, He tolerated me being around, which is far better then he was with most women he met.

Until.... My sister showed up.

Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

We took Lou to my sister's house, for lots of reasons, none of which matter anymore. He was intrigued by her. Watching her every move, very calm when she was close by, agitated when she would walk away. It was interesting to watch, these were things he had never done before, for anyone.

My sister was taken with him, and with the thoughts of maybe getting Lou to tame down some and be more social we decided to let him stay with her for a little while, to see how it worked out.

Well... I don't think we are getting our bird back.

In 24 hours after leaving him there, this is what we were treated to on Facebook...

Can you feel the hate and loathing? 

*Not Lou's, but mine.*

 Oh wait! Is he gonna eat her!! 

*this looks promising* 

 No, it's the got yer beak game!

*cries*

Hugging...really?!? 

*now your just rubbing it in.*

All kidding aside, Lou is happy, and that makes me happy, even if I have yet another thing to envy my sister about. ;-)

Friday Picture Post

It's been a rough month here, with everything that's happening there has been very little time to get out and actually enjoy ourselves. I have been busying myself with fractal making in the hopes of keeping my mind off some of the more traumatic incidents that have recently been daunting us. And on occasion snapping pictures of the animals when they do something that makes me smile. These are a few of those pictures.

Gunnar (front) and Scarlet (rear) were running around and playing until I pulled out the camera. Scarlet went for the instant sitting girl pose while Gunnar was curious as to what he might have been doing wrong at that moment.

Echo posing pretty for his close up.

This is London, one of the green-cheek conures we have here. She is pretty feisty and very brave for a smaller bird.

As I was feeding her London made a break for it and flew over to the kitchen window. Lou is outside watching the action and wondering if she'll get close enough to grab.

Slowly life is returning to normal, life moves on even if I don't really want to. So I will try and get out a little more and of course, take pictures to share with everyone.

See you guys next week, have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Bad Bird Day

Just like having a bad hair day, it seems that every feathered occupant here is having an off feather day.

Duke has not stopped screaming all day, I finally had to cover him to give my migraine a rest. Kenya almost "got me" when I was feeding her. Echo let out an alert scream right on my ear as I was feeding him. Pedro is upset and yells at me every time I walk past him. In fact, the only bird that seems happy to see me today is Lou, and I am just not falling for it.

Settling down

Things are finally finding a flow in the house. I was up early this morning, I went straight into feeding the flock and quieting everyone down. They can get quite loud in the morning.

Everyone gets bird bread in the AM. It's a basic corn bread/apple juice mixture with anything we have in the fridge they can eat mixed and baked. Almost everybody gobbles it down before I have a chance to walk away from their cage.

Duke now only eats when he is on the play stand. I put a foraging toy in his cage about 2 hrs ago in hopes that it will encourage him to eat when he is in there. I hope it works.

Echo seems to be relaxing around Duke. He isn't really screaming when Duke gets close anymore. Things are looking up.

Kenya is still eating anything I offer her. Defiantly a plus. She is also very curious about Duke. She watches him all the time and moved to the side of her cage that is closest to him when he is on the stand.

Lou has been talking a lot when I leave the room. Right now he is calling out "step up" and "Peek-a-boo". He may want to see me, so he knows where I am, or maybe he wants to lure me in for a bite, who knows. I think he wants out and is trying to be cute so I forget which bird he is and open the cage door. But I am suspicious like that. ;)

I have been trying to switch the birds to a organic pellet this week. It's going slowly as any food switch does. Pedro is completely switched over, and Echo is mostly there as well. I hope the others fall into line as well. The new pellet is much better for them.

TGIF

Happy Friday everyone! It's been a long week over here. Lots of little birdie idiosyncrasies to work around but it's getting better. Slowly getting better but I am just happy we're moving in the right direction.

The video I took this week didn't turn out, so I was looking threw my video's (being video Friday and all) and found a nice short one featuring Lou. Lou doesn't get a whole lotta love here so I thought it would be nice to post this video short.

So Here's Lou doing his Happy Dance. Why so happy? Cause he is inside, loose, and keeping me on the other side of the room. ;)

Yum!

I talked earlier this week about bringing Lou our Green-wing Macaw in for dinner bonding. I took some video of him being all cute to share with you today.

Here is Lou trying to say Yum after each bite of Pasta.



And here is Lou waving at me and acting all cute as he tries to lure me closer.



Have a great weekend everyone!

Dinner and a Birdie

Last night we brought Lou in for some dinner bonding time. Lou normally doesn't some inside much, or at least loose inside much because he hates me. Well maybe hate is too strong a word, he actually wants to kill me and keep John all to himself. But he loves John and that’s all that really matters...Right?

Thing bravely offers Lou some broccoli.

So, since getting too close to Lou is really out of the question for me, I take pictures from a distance while John interacts with him. Some times Lou will allow me to be the bearer of yummies, but those occasions are relatively rare.

"You just wait til I figure out how to use these Lady!"

"Okay. Who brought home the phoenix?"

Despite me lurking around with the camera, Lou had a good time. We had chicken, one of his favorite foods, with broccoli and macaroni. (No cheese for Lou.)

"I'm imagining this is your finger Mommy."

"Yum!"

He loves chicken bones, he likes to lick the marrow out of them before trying to throw the rest to the dogs. (We grab em up before puppies get them.) Lou behaved himself for the most part, only lunging at me once or twice, but giving me the eye the whole time I was in the room... Have I mentioned that he doesn't like me?

Pictures of the day

I dared to give Lou his bath today. Not that giving him a bath is dangerous per say, But to take pictures I have to hold the hose, camera and open the cage to get some decent shots. ^^;;; So keep in mind I risked life and limb to bring you a few photos. XD

Before the door was opened...getting him nice and wet so he doesn't realize he can get me.

Ohh Ohh, a little to the left please.

Life with Lou

Lou is a Green Wing Macaw that my husband and I acquired from our handy man when we first bought our house back in 2008. He was somewhere between 3 and 5 years old and for at least a year or two was a “free range” Macaw. “Free range” meaning that his former owner decided that Lou didn't need a cage and could wander freely on his very large property.

While this sounds nice for Lou, it wasn't. His only source of water, for bathing or drinking, was a rancid algae filled plastic mold pond on the dilapidated back porch. There was no real shelter for him when the weather would turn cold or wet so when the opportunity for me to get Lou out of there came around, I snatched it.

Now let me start by saying that I absolutely love parrots, and Macaws are absolutely beautiful, with really big beaks that could snatch my finger off my hand in a second. So I have a very healthy respect for these large beautiful birds. Most of that respect manifests with me staying out of strike range anytime Lou is not in his cage.

                                                                       Hi Lou!

I know that if it were not for me that Lou would have probably died from his free roaming lifestyle. His partner cockatoo had already been run over and killed in his former owners driveway, so I had no doubt that Lou would not have lasted another year in that situation. I got him out of there, got him a huge cage and lots of toys and set him up in a place where he could be happy and healthy with the hopes to build him an outdoor enclosure as soon as we could afford it. Now if Lou would get on board with this plan we'd be set.

You see, Lou does not like me. Well not just me, he doesn't like any woman, but he seems to have a real hate on for me. And he is a plotter. For the first six months or so Lou and I had an understanding. I would sit next to him and we'd talk. I'd feed him treats through the bars of his cage and we were good. Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly chipper, we'd play peek-a-boo, which was always fun. All in all Lou and I were getting close, forming a bond of trust that had me believing that we would be the best of buddies and I would be able to handle him soon. Little did I know that Lou had an entirely different take on the situation, and that he was mainly biding his time until he could kill me.

The event happened on a slow Sunday afternoon. It was cage cleaning time and Lou was on the bird stand while his cage was being scrubbed down. I was sitting there talking to him and telling him what a good boy he was while I handed him treats. All was good for a moment, then it got ugly. As I handed him a treat he thrust that huge gaping maw of a beak at me. He grabbed my thumb by the rather long, at the time, nail and snapping it off like it was a twig. I freely admit that I screamed like I had been shot. My nail had been ripped off a bit past the quick and it hurt...a lot.

From that point on I have never been in grabbing distance of Lou again. He was loose one morning when I woke up and found him roaming in the kitchen. I hid behind a door until my husband was able to get him and put him back into the safety of his cage.

I still feed Lou treats through the bars of his cage. I still talk to him, play peek-a-boo, sing with him when it rains and have a pleasant relationship with him..as long as he is in his cage. When he is out, I find another room to be in, because it is obvious by his lunging and body language that he does not trust me and in general has absolutely no use for me what so ever. That's alright though, I still love him like I love all my parrots, I'll just refrain from giving him kisses.

~Suzanne