How to Speak Cockatiel Like a Native

      Cockatiels are a study of activity…these birds never stop moving, at least not if they can possibly help it. The favorite thing to do for a Cockatiel, is chewing. They will chew on paper, cardboard, fabric, power cords, pencils and virtually anything else that will fit into their beaks. If they don't have anything to chew on they will grind their bills together to make a sort of crunching noise. This crunching noise is a vocabulary unto itself. What it basically means is, I'm bored, do something….now!  

     The need to chew is probably symbolic of the never-ending growth cycle of a bird's beak. It doesn't stop growing so chewing on objects is the bird's natural way of checking the growth of its own beak. Regardless of the necessity of said chewing, it does not endear the bird to its owner any more than tornadoes endear us to trailer parks. Oh yes, and if the bird has nothing to chew on, and gets bored chewing it's own beak, it will preen.

     Preening is an activity that takes up about 75 percent of the Cockatiel's day. First the bird must dig deeply with its beak, under, around and over each and every feather on its body. This is a time-consuming process but the bird has nothing but time, so the job will get done. After the feathers are all cleaned, then the bird goes to work on its own hide, picking off dead pieces of skin and depositing them on a person's shirt sleeve. When the whole process is finally finished, the bird gives a mighty shake and sends bits of bird dander and feathers flying everywhere. Then it starts all over again.

     Most Cockatiels have a one-word vocabulary. It consists of, and I quote…”screech!” This one word is spoken in two different ways, at high volume and at top volume. High volume will hurt your ears, especially if the bird is perched on your shoulder when he says it. Top volume will pop your eardrum, which makes me wonder if every Cockatiel on the planet is stone cold deaf. High volume is used when the bird wishes to make a statement regarding its own situation. It can stand for everything from, “it's cold in this meat locker; get me a furnace pronto,” to, “I hate humans but I let them live because they feed me.”

     Top volume is reserved for those moments when the bird suspects that it is being ignored. This is intolerable and must be dealt with swiftly. The further away the bird owner is, the louder the complaint from the ignored bird. So, basically, if the bird's owner is visiting in Florida and the bird is in Michigan, watch out. Glass is scheduled to break within the borders of five states. The screeching does not stop until either one of two things happens. Either the bird drops over dead or it gets its own way, one or the other.

     Cockatiels will climb the insides of their cages as if they are jungle gyms, dangling from either their claws or their beaks. They will hang by their beaks from the roof of the cage and kick their feet furiously in mid-air hoping to get purchase on something. Cockatiels will spin completely around backwards in mid-air with their heads firmly connected to the roof of the cage. It is quite unnerving the first time you witness a bird spinning its head completely around backwards like an owl. It brings to mind a young Linda Blair in the film, “The Exorcist.” If your cockatiel starts spewing pea soup and develops a voice similar to Darth Vader's, watch out.

     All of the theatricals and dance steps are done to inform the bird's owner that the bird is ready for some out-of-cage time, and you will ignore that request at your own peril as the bird will simply make its demands louder and more noticeable until you respond favorably. Cockatiels automatically assume that all humans are hearing impaired so they do their very best to make themselves known to one and all. Having tantrums is not above them. In fact, it is second nature.

     The cockatiel “tizzy” or tantrum, consists of clinging to the side of the cage and rapidly beating the wings against the bars, creating an effect similar to a very large humming bird. This creates a whirlwind of flying feathers that the most recent preening has loosened. If this doesn't get your attention, the wing beating will be accessorized by some clever head spinning, and glass shattering. If that also doesn't work, the cockatiel will furiously pummel its little mirror toy into submission. If that last ditch effort fails to get the desired result, the bird will assume you have either died or gone stupid, and it will attempt to lift the door of its own cage itself. It will succeed in doing so too, if it works at it long enough. Cockatiels only pretend to be dumber than people. In reality, they are the ones writing the bird owner's book.

     Cockatiels are kissers too. They will nibble and smooch your face for hours on end. All you have to do is eat something in the bird's presence and the nibbling will commence. This is the their way of saying, “I saw you eat that morsel right in front of a poor, starving birdie. How could you do that, you bad human?” They will kiss you until you give in and let them have a taste of what you are eating. They will lick at it once, and never touch it again in order to return to nibbling your face. What you have in your mouth is seventy times tastier than what you offered to the bird, -- even if it is the same exact stuff.

     Basically, the only language lesson you need to learn from a Cockatiel is this…"do for me, and do for me right now. If you don't do for me right this second, I will call the pet owner's police and then you'll be sorry". You don't think that birds know how to use the telephone? Ha! That's just what they would like you to think.

The Steering Wheel is in the Front Seat for a Reason... I Think.

      Everyone who has ever driven a car knows at least one certified back seat driver. There's at least one, but preferably six or seven, residing within every family tree,  hanging from it's branches like chestnuts. These are the people who will shout directions as loudly as possible from the back seat of your car while you are sitting at an intersection. The only rule for this exercise is that more than one person has to be shouting at the same time and all of the instructions must be different. If they can do it in several different languages, that's a bonus. While there may only be one actual certified back seat driver, all the rest of them are practicing wannabes and absolutely none of them actually know where they are going or how to get there from wherever you happen to be.

     I have been in the driver's seat enduring this kind of turmoil myself, and let me tell you, it is not easy nor is it fun to be driving on unfamiliar territory whilst hauling passengers who all think they know exactly where to go and are trying to out shout each other in the back seat. On one particular occasion, I made it to my destination without killing anyone, but on the way home, I finally gave up and stopped at a beauty parlor to ask directions. This was the primo moment where my passengers could have spoken up with their pearls of wisdom, but nope, they were suddenly as silent as guppies at that moment, their rear ends firmly planted in their seats like children in time out.

     Inside the beauty parlor I asked a woman with gobs of white goop all over her hands, which way to get back on the freeway. She wiped off her hands on a towel, got a pen and some paper, and proceeded to instruct. This, I was to discover, was another back seat driver wannabe. Oh, she knew how to get there all right, but she for darn sure, was not going to tell me. “Turn right as you leave our lot,” she advised, swinging her hand in the general direction of the parking lot….or Texas. “Then go straight for two blocks until you get to the rail road tracks, cross them and turn left and go straight until you pass a school building. If you pass the school you have gone too far. Turn around and go back.”

     A pause….a very long pause occurred….the kind that authors like to describe as 'pregnant'. I guessed that at that point, her dissertation, for some reason, was over. I decided that prompting was in order if I wanted to go any further than the local high school. “And once I've passed the school and turned back? I assume there is a preferred road I should have taken somewhere along the way.” She blinked and the spell, whatever it was, perhaps caused by the fumes from the bleach job occurring in the corner, was broken. “Oh. Right. Take Fortune Drive all the way to its end and you will see the sign for I 75”.

     I smiled and thanked her, and it was at that point that the back seat drivers occupying the “maintenance” chairs with various hairdo's under construction, all spoke up at once. “No, not Fortune Drive! Take Oak Avenue!! That one leads directly to I 75.” Another shouted over her, “no, take Cedar Street for two blocks, turn right on Oak, then left on Chestnut. That is the quickest way to the turnoff.” A very recently blonde woman way back in the corner, from whose head the most fumes were radiating, stood up and shouted above everyone else….”Which freeway is she looking for again? I only know how to get to I 75 from here.” Then she promptly sat down, shut up, and went back into her bleach-fume coma, never apparently, to speak again.

     I gritted my teeth and attempted another smile, which totally wiped the grin from the hairdresser's face. For a moment there she looked a little frightened, as if Jack the Ripper had just strolled into her shop. “Just go down Fortune Drive like I told you.” She showed me the world's worst impression of a road map, complete with scribbles for the rail road track, an X for the forbidden high school and a glob of white goop for the mysterious Fortune Drive, which none of the other women in the shop had apparently ever heard of. The paper looked like a monkey had scratched it out while hopped up on bananas. I said, “thank you”, took my (ahem) map and left the building.

     I was doomed and I knew it. I was never going home again for as long as I lived. I would spend the rest of my life in a vehicular purgatory, driving around in circles, forever looking for the elusive freeway that supposedly would take me back home. I got back in the car and shoved the “map” into someone's lap and turned the key in the ignition. This was the cue. The voices in the backseat started to question, then speculate, then instruct. I started to make the turn the woman had specified, only to find myself in the parking lot of the business next door. I looked up to find six startled pairs of eyes watching me from the windows of the beauty parlor and a few really frightened ones from the windows of the business next door.

     I reversed direction and tried again, with the chorus in high gear behind me. I followed the directions best I could and actually found a rail road track. My hopes soared. I began looking for Fortune Drive. Three trips past the all too familiar high school later, I still had not found the drive in question. I stopped at another business, this one apparently operated solely by a twenty-something woman reading a book and looking bored. “Where is Fortune Drive?” My voice quavered. “I'm trying to find I 75 so I can get home.” I must have looked particularly desperate. She closed up the book and set it down.

     “You wouldn't happen to be coming from the truck show, would you?” She asked with an unimaginable certainty in her voice. I was surprised but I nodded yes. “How'd you know?” She laughed. “I've had six people come in here already this morning asking that same question. It seems they all stopped at the beauty parlor over on sixth street….”

Well, to make a long story short, there was no road called Fortune Drive as it's name had changed about five years previously, and when I found the newly named road in question, it was nowhere near a high school and it led directly to I 75.…and home.

     The moral of the story? Never listen to a backseat driver…especially one who is high on bleach fumes and living five years in the past. 

One Sedentary Man's Perspective on Exercise

     I have to admit I was carrying around a little extra junk in the trunk, as well as an over-inflated spare tire around the gut. I was told by my co-workers that this old clunker would be healthier if I took off the few extra pounds I packed on over the winter, so I decided to try out some exercises to see what would happen. First I spent a horrifying ten minutes examining myself naked in the bathroom mirror and discovered a few truths...the first being that I should never, ever do that, and perhaps the bathroom mirrors need to be removed from the premises, and the second being that my legs were fat. I mean, the gut I can suck in if need be, but how do you suck in your thigh blubber? I was confused by this situation. Are men seriously supposed to have fat thighs? I thought that was just a woman's disease. Well, they act like it's a disease so I figured it must be, but I never expected to discover it attached to a manly man like me.

     After discovering my non-ignorable trouble areas and ignoring the rest, I set myself to the task of deciding which exercise would best trim my fat legs. I finally settled on squats for two reasons: One, they looked easy and I don't like to sweat if I can help it, and two, they looked easy. Hey, I'm a guy, remember? But, I was soon to find out that squats are not that easy...at least not for someone older than five or someone not actually sitting in a chair. You see, that's what squats are...sitting down in a chair -- without the chair. You are supposed to set your feet apart a certain distance, put your arms up over your head...apparently to help protect your idiotic brain when you fall down, and then...you squat. Well, sort of. The concept sounded easy enough inside my exercise-deprived brain.

     My first squat looked like a drunken sumo wrestler had entered the arena. Lift that leg, stomp. Lift the other leg, stomp. Okay, now I'm in position, hands over head and bend the knees. That was the command my mind was giving my body but my body failed after the bend the knees part. Nobody had ever told my knees that holding up my body without a chair was even possible in that position and they were not game to give it a shot. They creaked and cracked and complained. This was followed by uncontrollable shaking, as if weeping in frustration. Then they gave up and down I went with a nearly disabling thud on my aforementioned junky-trunk. Oh, and by the way, I was already sweating, which is something, if you recall, that I dis-like.

     Then I discovered by asking around, that smart people actually learn to do squats by holding onto something, like a wall, a bookshelf...a refrigerator with a full stock of ice cold beer. That way they can squat without killing themselves. So, I grabbed a doorway and did my squat, and afterward, when I picked myself up off the floor, and yanked all the splinters out of my hands, I re-thought the situation and chose a tall lamp post that gave my death grip something to grip. I grabbed that post and started my squat. My hands slid down the post and so did I. Only problem is, once I was in full squat, with my knees whining, and my sweaty hands hanging on for dear life, I found I couldn't get back up again. I tried climbing the lamp post but it fell over and nearly knocked me out.

     My next squat went better and even better the next, and before I knew it I was squatting like a pro and doing so without the lamp post. I kept checking my thigh size in the mirror each week, and they were definitely changing. In fact, they were getting bigger. I wasn't aware that bigger was an option here, until I realized that what I was doing was building the fat into muscle. Soon enough even my fat pants were straining to contain my thighs. I was definitely unaware that in my efforts to get a few sizes smaller, I would need to buy larger pants.

     Now I can't find jeans that fit without calling in the National Guard, so I had to resort to buying on websites where clothing designers hide the 'special' sizes, which is what they call clothing for not-quite-emaciated people. So, after months of squatting to improve myself, I have managed to make parts of myself bigger instead of thinner. But oh joy, at least I can squat on command. Take that, co-workers.