Rubber Chickens

Chris, Holly, the cats (Monty & Dusty) and I were with my mom for the holidays. Chris gets Christmas presents just like all kids, and since Christmas is his birthday (or hatch day) he also gets birthday gifts. One of his all time favorite toys is a rubber chicken doll I got him over a year ago. She, the rubber chicken, is really a squeaky dog toy called Henrietta Chicken, and she wears a rubber bathing suit. From the moment I gave it to him he has been obsessed with it. He dragged it under his cage and proceeded to guard it for long stretches of time. If I bent down to look at him under there he would hiss at me (yes, cockatoos can hiss just like cats). One time I made the mistake of trying to take a photo of him with Henrietta under his cage and he charged at me. Apparently, he does not like the paparazzi.

Under the cage with the original Henrietta in NYC

Angry about the photos and in attack mode

My mother (Barbara) found an entire family of rubber chicken dolls in a pet catalog and we ordered him all different ones: Mrs. Claus chicken, surfer dude chicken, Playboy Bunny chicken (for real!), grandma chicken, etc. Now he has a whole collection, some in my apartment and some at my mother’s house.

A sampling of rubber chicken dolls in Katonah: Surfer dude & Mrs. Claus

His treatment of the subsequent rubber chickens is the same as with the original: they live under his cages, I am not allowed to touch them, but he occasionally drags them out for a viewing and holds them up so I can look at them.

A rare Playboy Bunny Chicken viewing in NYC

I assume he considers them his family or part of his flock and he thinks they are ‘real.’ When he boards he takes one with him. Holly has some as well, but Holly is not obsessed with them. Chris likes to play with Holly’s, too. And, what is interesting is that there is a “pecking order” amongst the rubber chickens: the cockatoo is obsessed with the girls, doesn’t care for the boys, and ignores the grandma. He also does not like the boy chickens near his girls and will toss them aside……..I guess the boys are competition and the grandma isn’t hot enough for him. But, as much as Chris loves the young girl chickens he has a nasty habit of decapitating them. First he chops off their ears, then I discover their heads hanging by a rubber thread and eventually, the carnage of a headless rubber chicken in a little rubber bathing suit. Troubling to say the least.

So, for this past Christmas, Chris and Holly each got a new Playboy Bunny rubber chicken doll from Barbara. She joined surfer dude chicken and Mrs. Claus chicken under his cage at Barbara’s house. Until……Chris grabbed her and abducted her and squeezed himself in between the cage floor grating and the cage tray beneath it and dragged the Playboy Bunny chicken with him.

Caught in the act: the cockatoo hovering over the abducted rubber chicken

Lifeless rubber chicken body lying in the cage tray

He proceeded to scrape her face against the edge of the cage tray until she had no face, effectively terminating another rubber chicken.

Chris' rubber chicken without a face on the left, Holly's in pristine condition on the right

I’m not sure if this is more Henry the VIII –let’s make room for a new wife behavior- or more Jack the Ripper serial killer behavior, but either way he clearly has some misogynistic tendencies. Now, if Chris were my human son, he’d be on his way to scared straight camp in the desert followed by months of psychotherapy, but since he’s my feather child all I can do is document it and thank God I’m not made of rubber.

On the flip, gentler side Chris is in love with my mother—Barbara---and wants to cuddle with her all the time. He calls her name even when she is not around and asks me "where's Barbara?" or tells me to "call Barbara." Theirs is an interspecies love story if ever there was one (at least from the cockatoo’s point of view) and I'm sure that she too is grateful that she is not made of rubber.

Chris snuggling in Barbara's arms