Parrot Hijinks

A lot of people don't know this, but parrots actually laugh.  Chris and Holly also love to tease me (or torture me) and laugh when they do it.  For example, Holly will say "bad boy", bite and then chuckle.   Maybe he thinks if he gives the "bad boy" warning up front it's my fault if I don't get out of the way in time.  Chris will throw something out of my reach and laugh about it, or he'll fly away to a place I can't catch him and find that very funny.  He also laughs at jokes and sarcastic comments, which makes me wonder how much he really does understand.  And, of course, they like to torture each other at times, too. 

A couple of weeks ago we had a lovely teasing/torture session in our apartment.  It started with me attempting to work out on my little step machine.  The machine is near Holly's cage.  For some reason Holly gets very angry when I work out in the apartment.  He puffs himself up and patrols the space around his cage and won't tolerate Chris coming near us.  He'll even throw an umbrella at Chris, knowing Chris is deathly afraid of them.   Of course, Chris wants to be on top of me when I'm working out, so most of my workouts consist of me breaking up bird fights (hence why my home workouts are infrequent.) 

Puffed up Pionus

A warning glare

I guess Chris got frustrated and decided to have some fun of his own, so he grabbed the keys to his cage and held them hostage.  I couldn't get them back.  He played with them for a long time and is now obsessed with them.  Every chance he gets he climbs the shelf where he knows I keep them and he dangles them in front of me like a carrot---when I go to grab them he either flys off or runs off into his cage or to his play area.  I don't care that much if he's playing with them, except for the fact that I can't lock his cage without them....Ironic isn't it?  He'll be in the cage, which gives me the opportunity to lock him in there, yet I can't because he's got the keys in his beak.  He's like an evil genius!  Chris may be the one who spends part of his day in a cage, but trust me, I'm the one serving the life sentence.

My jailor