(long... scroll down to the red for a shorter read)
We have friends from the Caribbean who say they’re on Island time...well parrots have their own sense of time too.
It’s been over a year now since I gave away my cockatiels, an event that broke my heart then and still does every time I think about it. We got them back but they were not without scars.
We’d had them both since baby hood, one at 10 weeks and one at 4 months. Torrie is the one we got at 4 months old, she had been to college with her original owner but refused to eat, so we got her. She seemed unfazed by all that and gave kisses and loved to be on a shoulder.
Spirit was never quite as outgoing as Torrie — we had a male, Tucker before either of them and where Tucker and Torrie loved everyone Spirit was a little more reticent. She trailed behind the other 2. Still, she hung out with us and spent hours on hubby’s shoulder while he worked at the computer.
Then we gave them away in January of 2017. We got them back, I think it was June when the guy said due to family problems he ‘couldn’t handle’ the birds any more.the first words out of my mouth were can I have my cockatiels, and I had them within a day. I did try to help him place others but these 2 were my primary concern. By this time we’d decided not to move to a condo so I knew they’d have a permanent home with us.
We thought having them home would go back to being just like before but it was very different. They’d lost trust and they screamed all the time. We tried treats, pets (they no longer wanted pets), and just letting them on our shoulders (not happening either). We tried leaving them alone to settle in. Nothing worked. The screaming got unbearable. In July I wrote a thread about it and really buckled down to work on the problem, because by then I’d decided it was time to fix it or let them go somewhere they'd be happier, not to mention that I simply couldn’t handle the constant screaming.
START HERE TO SKIP THE BACKSTORY
Now I am finally to my point: bird timing and people timing, those 2 things don’t have much in common. You or I might think good grief, you had them back 5 months( back in July) of course they are settled back in. Well they weren’t. And I wrote the journal thread and sort of fell off working at it, there was the hurricane and I opened my online store …. stuff, you know. Life happens. So I haven’t been very consistent with it. With that said...
Just this week more than one year after the date I gave them away, I finally got both Torrie and Spirit on my shoulders, they let me open the bird room door without flying off, they let me walk down the hall, they stayed with me into the office and hung out with us. Finally, after a whole year we are back to what used to be a natural, daily activity. Spirit flew over and got on hubby and stayed there so long we laughed about it. That used to be every single day. Torrie has gotten to where she INSISTS on having scritches, just like she used to.
Bird trust has to be earned, and it is a long time in coming. They’re not like you and me, where we meet someone and have a gut instinct and say ok you're going to be my friend. I broke the trust I had with them — I still remember the look in Spirit’s eyes as she looked at me from the travel cage, she knew I let her go. Something in her broke at that moment. Something worse happened to her while she was gone, I don’t know what that was.
Now imagine if it was some other person who broke that trust, gave her away, then she lived with the guy and whatever it was happened that made her so scared of people and dogs, THEN she came here. That’s where most rescue and re-home parrots are, they’ve already had their trust broken once or more and then you get them and wonder why they are frightened, hissing, lunging. That’s why. Their trust has been broken.
They aren't’ going to just trust you because you gave them a treat every day for a week or a month. They aren’t going to stop biting you if their experience out of say, two years of knowing humans is that for the first 1 year and 20 months humans were mean. Or unreliable. Or didn’t respect their boundaries, or heed their warnings.
Bird timing is long. And every time you or someone in the household is inconsistent or breaks the trust rules, time has to stretch more. I know this. I bow my head to them and recognize it’s my fault. That doesn’t make it less hurtful and it doesn’t make the trust bond rebuild any faster.
Torrie used to love showers. She’d sit on the shower floor under a spray you’d think was way too strong, and she’d stay there all day if you let her. Now the shower floor is too scary. She will only stay on the floor a minute or 2. She hasn’t showered with abandon since she’s been back - that is my next project.
We have friends from the Caribbean who say they’re on Island time...well parrots have their own sense of time too.
It’s been over a year now since I gave away my cockatiels, an event that broke my heart then and still does every time I think about it. We got them back but they were not without scars.
We’d had them both since baby hood, one at 10 weeks and one at 4 months. Torrie is the one we got at 4 months old, she had been to college with her original owner but refused to eat, so we got her. She seemed unfazed by all that and gave kisses and loved to be on a shoulder.
Spirit was never quite as outgoing as Torrie — we had a male, Tucker before either of them and where Tucker and Torrie loved everyone Spirit was a little more reticent. She trailed behind the other 2. Still, she hung out with us and spent hours on hubby’s shoulder while he worked at the computer.
Then we gave them away in January of 2017. We got them back, I think it was June when the guy said due to family problems he ‘couldn’t handle’ the birds any more.the first words out of my mouth were can I have my cockatiels, and I had them within a day. I did try to help him place others but these 2 were my primary concern. By this time we’d decided not to move to a condo so I knew they’d have a permanent home with us.
We thought having them home would go back to being just like before but it was very different. They’d lost trust and they screamed all the time. We tried treats, pets (they no longer wanted pets), and just letting them on our shoulders (not happening either). We tried leaving them alone to settle in. Nothing worked. The screaming got unbearable. In July I wrote a thread about it and really buckled down to work on the problem, because by then I’d decided it was time to fix it or let them go somewhere they'd be happier, not to mention that I simply couldn’t handle the constant screaming.
START HERE TO SKIP THE BACKSTORY
Now I am finally to my point: bird timing and people timing, those 2 things don’t have much in common. You or I might think good grief, you had them back 5 months( back in July) of course they are settled back in. Well they weren’t. And I wrote the journal thread and sort of fell off working at it, there was the hurricane and I opened my online store …. stuff, you know. Life happens. So I haven’t been very consistent with it. With that said...
Just this week more than one year after the date I gave them away, I finally got both Torrie and Spirit on my shoulders, they let me open the bird room door without flying off, they let me walk down the hall, they stayed with me into the office and hung out with us. Finally, after a whole year we are back to what used to be a natural, daily activity. Spirit flew over and got on hubby and stayed there so long we laughed about it. That used to be every single day. Torrie has gotten to where she INSISTS on having scritches, just like she used to.
Bird trust has to be earned, and it is a long time in coming. They’re not like you and me, where we meet someone and have a gut instinct and say ok you're going to be my friend. I broke the trust I had with them — I still remember the look in Spirit’s eyes as she looked at me from the travel cage, she knew I let her go. Something in her broke at that moment. Something worse happened to her while she was gone, I don’t know what that was.
Now imagine if it was some other person who broke that trust, gave her away, then she lived with the guy and whatever it was happened that made her so scared of people and dogs, THEN she came here. That’s where most rescue and re-home parrots are, they’ve already had their trust broken once or more and then you get them and wonder why they are frightened, hissing, lunging. That’s why. Their trust has been broken.
They aren't’ going to just trust you because you gave them a treat every day for a week or a month. They aren’t going to stop biting you if their experience out of say, two years of knowing humans is that for the first 1 year and 20 months humans were mean. Or unreliable. Or didn’t respect their boundaries, or heed their warnings.
Bird timing is long. And every time you or someone in the household is inconsistent or breaks the trust rules, time has to stretch more. I know this. I bow my head to them and recognize it’s my fault. That doesn’t make it less hurtful and it doesn’t make the trust bond rebuild any faster.
Torrie used to love showers. She’d sit on the shower floor under a spray you’d think was way too strong, and she’d stay there all day if you let her. Now the shower floor is too scary. She will only stay on the floor a minute or 2. She hasn’t showered with abandon since she’s been back - that is my next project.
happy tears, but this touched me. 
If anyone can get Torrie back to shower floors, it's you. 
