The Editor of Infinity has been asking us for some time to do an article about birds. Since we do not live with a domestic bird, we went searching for a family who did live with one.
Our friends Crystal and Nick Collins and their daughters Bree, Jackie, and Lila do live with a bird – a very beautiful Cockatoo named Angel. We asked if we could come and talk with Angel, and the family agreed. We asked Crystal and the girls to come up with some questions they would like to ask Angel, so that we would have some things to talk about when we came to her house.
We do not get the opportunity to speak with many domestic birds in our practice, so I was looking forward to seeing what this combination of bird and young humans would be like. I was also interested in seeing how talking with Angel might be similar to and different from, talking with the wild birds around our property.
I was greeted when I arrived by Lila and Jackie, ages 4 and 11, who seemed very excited to get started. Lila, who has met Kazel our Iguana, wanted to know if Kazel had come along too. Prior to arriving at the home, I had spoken with Angel to explain who I was and what we were going to do and why. When I walked into the family room, she was sitting on top of her cage door peering at me, ducking her head and lifting her foot repeatedly. I asked her why she was repeating the behavior, and she gave me a feeling of uncertainty and nervousness. The girls were still getting settled down, and as the conversation started flowing, Angel gradually calmed down and stopped bobbing her head. In fact, by the end of our conversation, she was comfortable enough to look at who was speaking with her calmly and directly in the eye for several seconds at a time. Angel is extremely intelligent, and once she got the hang of several humans talking to her in her head (simultaneously at times!), she showed a remarkable ability to focus and concentrate on the conversation for long periods of time.
Crystal and her daughters had a wide variety of questions for Angel. Questions ranged from why she plucked her breast feathers to which of the girls’ friends she liked to how she felt about her family. The feather plucking turned out to be part anxiety at being left alone when the family went to their weekend camping spot, and part loneliness for her family. Later in the conversation Angel explained that she loved her family very much, and watched out for them. When they went away for a few days without her, she could not take care of them and she felt anxious about that. Crystal talked of her “watch bird”, how Angel would fuss when she saw a stray cat or a coyote on the other side of the back yard fence. Angel said the family’s toy poodle Mitzi was … not very good at watching for the family, so she had to do it (I rephrased Angel’s actual words out of respect for Mitzi). The girls wanted to know if Angel would like to go to their campsite with them, and after explaining some of Crystal’s concerns for her safety, Angel decided she wanted to try it once.
Another very interesting part of the conversation was around how Angel sees herself with respect to the rest of the humans in the home. The girls were very puzzled about why, for example, Angel would allow Crystal to pick her up off the floor but she would not allow the girls to do it. Angel actually sees Crystal as her bird mother, and herself and the girls as baby birds. It was a very interesting visual. We explained to the girls that to Angel, they are like her sister birds, so she teases them and fusses at them just like they do with each other. She also said that she did not have to mind them because they were her peers, especially Jackie, who is very close in age years to Angel.
It was very enjoyable to work with young humans in this situation, because it allowed me to think about and explain things from a slightly different perspective. The questions they asked were sometimes unexpected, and sometimes anticipated. They were interested in how Angel felt about them individually, and whether she liked it when they petted her. We did have a conversation with the girls about how to approach Angel and how to tell if she wanted to be touched. We also explained to them that birds, unlike most dogs and cats, don’t necessarily enjoy petting in the same way. They seemed to understand that they needed to check out what Angel wanted too.
Another interesting line of questioning was around how Angel felt about the toy Poodle Mitzi and the cat Molly. Interestingly enough, she did not see them as siblings. Instead, she differentiated in her feelings between the dog and the cat. She liked to taunt and play with Mitzi, but she was not overly concerned about her safety around her. On the other hand, she was very aware of Molly and where she was in the house, and she actually referred to Molly by showing a cat’s front leg and claws. She definitely saw Molly as a predator, but not Mitzi.
We thanked Angel for talking with us, and then talked briefly with Mitzi. Mitzy was a little bit nervous about talking, and it took us a little while to get her to relax. We were able to help Lila understand how Mitzy felt when Lila approached her too quickly, and Lila practiced petting Mitzy slowly, gently, and briefly. We talked with Mitzy about what her favorite treats were, and the things she liked to do at the campsite (ride in the boat and play with her dog friend). We also talked about taking walks with the girls, and she said that she wanted to learn some new tricks. Angel sat on her door and listened attentively to the whole conversation. Molly the cat listened as well, but declined to be interviewed.
We were grateful to the Collins family for inviting us to talk with their children and their wonderful animal companions. Angel taught us a lot about the bird’s eye view of the world!
