My first parrot was actually sorta locally famous. "Her" name was Lola. Turned out she was an approximately 25 year old rooster named Lola. she had been picked up at the quarantine station in miami when no one claimed her. I rescued her because the man who got her said she tried to kill him. She spoke portuguese and would bite you so bad it would really need stitches, hiss, laugh, and call you a whore in spanish. If she saw a pack of cigarettes she would run at it, pick it up and run, and by the time you could take it away from her it would be demolished. I was young and stupid and when someone told me I could get her to quit being so mean if i punished her by giving her timeout in a grocery bag (dark and calming they said) I put her on my screen porch in a brown paper grocery bag and went to the store. when I came back she had demolished the bag, demolished most of the porch swing and wood trim on the porch and it was about two inches deep in debris. Then she tried to kill my mother, flew across the room, sunk talons in her brow, flapping wings, laughing maniacly while fiercely trying to peck her eyes out. She tried to kill all our dogs the same way. She would lure children and dogs by talking sweetly, like a little girl, calling them closer, closer, then she would go for the jugular. After two years I traded her for a just hatched baby amazon to handfeed from a breeder. She was a yellownape, and since I have learned she was probably a "bar bird", by things she would say, the horrible cursing, name calling sounds of ice clinking and pigs fighting she made. It was unreal. Just think about it if you are interested in buying a parrot someday. oh, and she chewed and shredded the entire leg off my 800.00 dining table when she got out of her cage one day while I was at work.
I would have liked to see someone clicker train THAT hellion... I went to see her after she had been at the breeders 5 years btw. He kept breeding pairs in long row houses in a field and as I walked across the field to see her, the breeder said "you know she won't remember you, once they are turned into breeders they lose all pet mentality" and I was three hundred yards away, at least, and out of hundreds of parrots screeching I hear this "DONNY!!!" (my husbands name, in my voice) and then she started "coughing" my exact smokers cough at the time. I think that was her name for me! janice -- courage is being scared to death...and saddling up anyway--John Wayne
