When I first met Oscu and Dan Dan I pretty much fell in love instantly.  Nevermind the fact that it took Oscu six months to let me pet him; he was nevertheless an instant charmer.  The two characters stole my heart, so they’re the ones to kick off the revival of my Pet of the Month.  Here’s what Nick has to say about them:

Dandan is a retired ‘grand champion’ showcat from a New Jersey-based lineage of Siamese. He is an approximately 8 year old flame point. His show name is Dalmane, which is the pharmaceutical name for a type of sleeping pill. I adopted him from the breeder at approx 2 yrs of age after he had been shown and bred, and he’s been a pampered retiree ever since. He enjoys belly rubs, laps, and his status as Seriously, The Best Cat Ever. His favorite foods are strawberries and bananas.

Oscu is also approximately 8yrs old, but his past is shrouded in mystery. Originally named Oscar in homage to Oscar de la Hoya, he was rescued from a dumpster in Connecticut and passed through ‘the system’ and onto several caretakers, finally ending up in my care.  His highly neurotic nature and traumatic past make him a constant nuisance yet his endearing intelligence and intuition make him an exercise in forgiveness and compassion. He’s characterized by 5-minute bursts of extreme affection, in between long periods of can’t-be-bothered fakery. His favorite foods are chickpeas, tortilla chips, and Ruffles potato chips.

While this might seem flattering, it’s actually not a desirable trait.  First of all, he needs to gain a sense of self, and be able to be independent.  His happiness should not rely on my presence.  Secondly, it isn’t pleasant for Chuck to have to listen to him contact calling any time I’m away from home.  But most importantly, he is seriously jealous of Chuck, which is no bueno.  A couple of nights ago, we were sitting next to each other on the couch and Archie was hanging out on my chest.  He looked over at Chuck and decided that he had no business sitting next to me, so he flew/ran over and attacked his ear. Fortunately, I was able to detach him before he did too much damage, but he did draw blood.

So we do have our work cut out for us after all.  First of all, Chuck and I are sharing the feeding duties, and Chuck is the only one who gets to give Archie pistachio through the cage bars.  Secondly, I’m going to have Chuck take part in training Archie to perform some basic tasks, like targeting, accepting liquid from a syringe, and perhaps raising his crest on cue.  Thirdly, when I have Archie out with me, he’s going to get a treat every time Chuck walks into the room, and when he’s calm about that, he’ll get treats for exhibiting calm behavior as Chuck decreases his distance between us.  We’ll go from there.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure how we’ll be able to film any of this, since both Chuck and I will be handling Archie so neither of us will be in a position to film. Perhaps it’s time to buy a real camcorder with a tripod.

In the meantime, here are a couple of somewhat boring videos of Archie and me hanging out together.  In the first one, he had been bunny hopping towards me on the floor, which I wanted to film, but then of course he stopped.  In the second one, he had flown around the room – including making full turns, without a tail, magically enough - which I again was hoping to film, but when I put him back on the sofa arm where he had initially launched himself, he was only interested in hanging out, as you will see, should you decide to watch them.  In summary, both videos are failed attempts at recording something interesting and instead capturing something entirely unimpressive, but if you’re really in the mood to watch a cute little Hawkhead be his delightful self, here ya go:

You can imagine my surprise, then, when this was his reaction when we set out to do our first recorded training session (sorry it’s sideways for most of the recording; I guess Chuck didn’t realize that the phone doesn’t automatically correct its direction):

My interest in being able to document the training sessions teaching him to come out of his cage is far outstripped by my excitement to discover that he isn’t really very fearful at all.  After we stopped recording this, I decided to try sliding his cage tray out of the cage while he was sitting there.  I moved it slowly and watched his reaction, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed.  I eventually got it all the way out, changed the papers, and started to put it back when he jumped down onto the tray and started laughing hysterically.  At that point, I had to get him to move so I could put the tray back.

I should have asked Chuck to record it, but I offered my hand, and within five approximations he had stepped completely onto it and was gently exploring my fingers and begging for more pistachios.  I then pushed the tray back in, set my hand inside his cage, and he calmly stepped down onto the tray.  No big whoop.

THEN, I left his cage door open while I got some foraging toys to refill his cage with.  When I came back in the room, he flew towards me, landing at my feet.  I offered my hand, and he stepped up and then climbed up to my shoulder, singing happily to himself and occasionally laughing.  I sat on the sofa, and he moved down to my chest.

For a few minutes, he explored the sofa and chatted away to himself, but then after a while he came back to my chest, pressed his body as close to my face as possible, then fluffed up his feathers and hunkered down for a nap.

So what I said earlier about, “We have our work cut out for us?”  Yeah.  Ignore that.  Because clearly, this little guy has made himself at home.

The day after he arrived, he already started eating everything else in his cage, so we’re already completely off his old pellets.  Furthermore, that evening he had already started to figure out how to forage.  Here’s what his cage looks like:

I don’t know if you can tell, but there’s an egg carton hanging towards the bottom of the back of the cage.  It was hanging horizontally, but after he ate the pellets I’d sprinkled on top, he got frustrated because he couldn’t reach the ones I’d sprinkled inside of it.  So, clever boy that he is, he solved that little problem by chewing through the hemp string that was holding it up.  When it fell and deposited the pellets onto the floor of the cage, he said, “HaHA!,” and then started laughing manically.  Then he climbed down to the bottom of his cage and happily munched away at his pellets.

Since then, however, as you again may or may not be able to tell in the photo, he discovered that if he chews through the carton, there are paper balls inside that are packed with Phoenix Foraging‘s UnPellet–which he has also discovered that he LOVES.  He also found the UnPellet in the other foraging toys in the back of the cage, Harrison’s and TOPS pellets in the coconut, and tries to get at all the food in the carousel toy at the front of his cage, but hasn’t quite figured out how to get to it yet.  And he LOVES his chop’n'freeze.  He loves all of his food, actually.  It’s so cute to watch him eating and laughing simultaneously.  He pins his eyes and giggles to himself as if to say, “Who knew food could be this delicious and exciting?!”   And his toys and swings!  He loves them, too!  I haven’t had to “teach” him anything; he’s done a stellar job of figuring things out on his own.

Another adorable behavior we’ve observed is running around backwards on the bottom of his cage.  He seems genuinely excited that he has a relatively soft, flat surface at the bottom of his cage, and he enjoys spending a lot of time down there, not only playing and eating, but also running backwards and laughing the whole time.  Since he has balance issues due to not having a tail, I can imagine that having a place where he can actually run and play without having to worry about falling is a relief and a delight.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any video to share with anyone yet.  We’re trying not to be too all up in his business yet, as he’s only just now starting to warm up to Chuck, and I don’t want to push my luck even though he has demonstrated an interest in me from the first moment we met.

(I just realized I never told that story in my first blog entry.  Quick tangent: when I got to his previous owner’s house to meet him for the first time, he immediately started talking to me and making kissy noises.  His owner told me that he had never done that to anyone other than himself.  Then after several minutes, when I got up to leave, Archie said, “Nooooooooooooo!” in this cute, shrill voice, then crouched down into a begging stance.  His previous owner laughed and said he’d never seen him do that to anyone before.)

So, yes, Archie had taken a shine to me from the beginning.  But affinity does not equal absolute trust, so both Chuck and I have been taking it slow with him.    He was pretty scared of Chuck at first, because he’s 6’6″ and built like a tank, and I don’t think Archie had ever been around anyone that big before.  I showed Chuck how to use non-threatening body language to communicate calmly with Archie, and how to recognize nervous or aggressive body language so that he could understand what Archie was communicating to him and could back off when Archie wanted him to.  Because Chuck is completely awesome, he immediately caught on, and in a very short period of time we’re seeing drastic improvement.  At first, Chuck couldn’t even walk by his cage without Archie flaring his crest and striking at the cage bars.  But here we are, three days later, and when Chuck went to drop a pistachio in Archie’s bowl, Archie bent down and calmly took it from Chuck’s fingers of his own volition.

That’s right: he loves pistachios.  He didn’t know what they were at first, but after I demonstrated eating one myself and making a big deal about how delicious it was, Archie hesitantly tried one himself.  His eyes pinned, he said, “Ooooooh!”, and then he ate every last crumb.  So, easily enough, we discovered our reinforcer.

So everything has fallen into place rather quickly: he’s more comfortable around us; he’s learning how to navigate his cage; he’s already got the varied diet nailed down; he’s making excellent progress on the foraging.  I think in the next day or two we’re going to try our first training session, which we will hopefully be able to record so I can post it.  We’ll see how it goes!  I’m hoping that, since he’s already so happy in this environment, teaching him to come out of his cage won’t be such a big deal as I had originally thought.  On the other hand, I’m not putting any undue expectations on him.  We’ll just have to see how it goes!

What I have learned about Archie in the, oh, 19 hours that he’s been home with me includes:

* He’s cagebound, and has a panic attack when I even open the cage door.  Apparently, he hadn’t been out of his cage in almost nine years.  I had to take a picture of him through the cage bars because opening the door to get an unobstructed view was out of the question.

* His poop is super stinky because he’s been on a crappy dyed, sugar-filled pellet his whole life. A healthier diet will make the poop smell better.

* He doesn’t know how to forage or play with toys.

* He’s missing his tail because (I’ve been told) over a decade ago a cat attacked him and he sustained permanent follicular damage to all but one tail feather.  Consequentially, he has terrible balance and falls often.

* He also hypervocalizes.  It’s near-constant.  He was only quiet for about a 6 hour period in the middle of the night, but didn’t stop chatting, even after all the living room birds got covered and the lights were turned off, until after midnight, and started up again as soon as the sky started getting light–maybe around 6:30 am or so.  Some of his noises are pretty cute – kisses, vibrato whistles, UFO noises, meowing kitten, etc. – but others are downright shrill.

Needless to say, we’ve got our work cut out for us.  So I was thinking, since I’m going to be working on his progress anyway, it might be a good idea to blog about the process, not only to share his progress with anyone who might be interested, but also to learn more by documenting and reviewing my work.

So!  We need a plan!  Here’s what I’m thinking:

Diet conversion / teaching to forage:

1) Offering him a wide variety of foods that are easily accessible throughout the cage, with a few of his old dyed pellets sprinkled on top. Sprinkling his old dyed pellets on and in foraging toys that are easy to use and require little to no previous skill.  Since birds are observational learners, moving Ernie’s food bowl to the holder nearest Archie’s cage so that Archie can see Ernie eating the chop’n'freeze.  ***UPDATE: It’s already working! I just observed him trying out some of the chop’n'freeze while Ernie was eating some of his, and a few minutes later eating some pellets that were sitting on top of one of his foraging toys.  That’s excellent progress for the first day!***

2) Gradually reducing the number of old dyed pellets so that less and less of his diet is the old stuff and more of it is the healthy stuff, until I am sure that he is eating enough of the healthy stuff that he no longer needs the old pellets.

3) Gradually making the foraging toys more challenging for him, as discussed in my previous blog entry about teaching birds how to forage.

Excessive/inappropriate vocalization:

1) His vocalizations will naturally decrease somewhat by simply learning how to forage and play, so he has something else to do with his time other than make noise.  But also:

2) Ignore the unpleasant noises and reinforce the desirable noises. Also reinforce silence. ***UPDATE: This is already starting to work a little bit.  Whenever he makes a quiet noise and I reinforce it, he will continue making only quiet noises for a few minutes. He still gets loud a few minutes later, but at least he’s already figured out that making quiet noises means that he gets to play call-and-response games with me!***

3) Teach him to make cute noises on cue.  Maybe teach him to whistle some songs, since he clearly has an ear for music.

Being cagebound:

1) Find a reinforcer.  This might take a while, since he’s just now learning to eat new foods, seems nervous around new objects, and isn’t stoked on human touch yet.

2) Teach him to target with said reinforcer.

3) Target him near the door of the cage, then systematically desensitize him to the door being opened by using tiny approximations towards having the door opened all the way.

4) Target him onto the perch on the door, then systematically desensitize him to being on the door perch as the door is being opened by using tiny approximations towards having the door opened all the way.

5) Gradually increase the length of time that he is sitting on the door perch with the door open.

6) Target him onto my hand or, depending on his comfort level with hands, a portable perch–either way, again using tiny approximations towards the end goal of both of his feet being on my hand or the perch.

7) Gradually move farther and farther away from the cage for longer and longer periods of time, until he is completely comfortable being out of his cage and exploring other areas of the house.

8) Eventually get him used to playing on the playgyms and taking showers on the shower perch.

Balance issues:

As for balance issues, we’ll see.  I packed his cage with plenty of swings, perches, tents, etc., to help break his fall, and so far he seems to be coping pretty well.  But if he’s still falling a lot I might try removing the round perches and just using a lot of flat, ledge-type perches, like flagstone and 2x4s.

That’s pretty much the plan for now.  It might need modification as we progress, but I’m hopeful that we will be successful.  I named him Archibald Felix because I was looking for a name that meant either “brave” or “joyful”, since I believe he can let go of his fears and become a brave, joyful bird.  Archibald means brave, Felix means joyful, and Archie is pretty cute, especially for a bird with an arched crest.  So there you have it. My newest flock member, a beautiful little guy whom those of you who read this will get to follow on his journey towards becoming brave and joyful.

In the meantime, we’re having another Bird Ownership Class on December 5th, so be sure to check that out: www.frombeakstobarks.com/forthebirds

The day after that, December 6th, is Austin Parrot Society’s Holiday Extravaganza Party, so please feel free to come to that as well: www.meetup.com/austinparrotsociety.

We’re also still trying to find good homes for Brigit and Siobhan, so please check out their blog for more info: brigitandsiobhon.blogpost.com

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have time for that long-overdue massive update soon!

http://brigitandsiobhan.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

* May, June, July, and August Pets of the Month – I’ve got all the materials; now I just need time to post them!

* A balanced and unbiased look at the raw diet craze.

* The second edition of the Bird Owner’s Manual

* And coming soon…FBTB is about to get all net-savvy by joining Facebook and Twitter!  We might even get into RSSing all of ‘em together!  WHAT?!  That’s just crazy talk!

ALSO, the next Bird Ownership Class is coming up August 22 – 23!  Please go to the official webpage for more info!