A Very Tweet Story

Meet my bird. I will not reveal it's name in order to protect the bird's anonymity and privacy.

Although some of you are familiar with my bird from Seraphic Secret, I felt this bird deserved a post of it's own.

For sake of easy identification, we shall call the bird "Bird from Hell", or BFH for simplicity. (perhaps this will aid as a clue to the personality of said bird).

Nearly 21 years ago, when honeymooning in Hawaii, the hotel, in an attempt to create a tropical atmosphere, had scattered birds around the lobby and various parts of the hotel. My husband was fascinated. That was the beginning of our road into bird hell.

Years later, we were vacationing in Las Vegas, where the hotel felt it was incumbent upon them to provide daily entertainment by the pool. I guess allowing the guests to acquire the rest and relaxation that they had been pining away for, was not their idea of proper entertainment.

The entertainment just happened to be a "bird show", including several kinds of parrots doing various tricks and such. The birds were beautiful and entertaining to watch. So of course, my husband got the big idea that we needed to have this kind of entertainment at home.

Because, at the time, running after a 4 year old and 1 year old was not enough entertainment.

So, as he does with everything he takes seriously, (you should have seen what the poor guy had to go through before marrying me) he began researching the pros and cons of owning a blue and gold macaw.

To my not-so-good fortune, he found that they could easily acclimate into a family and home situation. So, about a year later, we were making our way to a bird store to purchase BFH.

Now, what you need to know about birds, is they bond with one person. Usually that person is the one that feeds and tends to them the most. So, of course, BFH took to my husband like a duck takes to water (pardon my bird-pun). Every day he would feed BFH through a tube until BFH could eat on it's own.

I have to admit, BFH was quite sweet in the beginning...even endearing. BFH would regergitate food for my husband, because that is how a bird shows love and loyalty...isn't that sweet?

Since you cannot outwardly detect the sex of a bird, we referred to BFH as a male.

As BFH grew, it became feistier, and more talkative. Never on command though...would just sit on it's perch and say "hello", hi, and could say it's name.

Since my kids could never see fit to walk all the way into another room to find me, they would yell "MOOOOOOOOOOOOM" from another room, and of course I would always yell back, "WHAAAAAAT". It did not take long for BFH to learn that when the kids yelled "mom", it was the cue to yell back "WHAAAAAAT". There were some benefits to this, as I didn't have to answer them anymore, BFH took care of that for me.

Too bad the damn bird couldn't have learned something useful, like cooking.

As time went on, the bird became, well, frankly, a pain in the ass. Messy as all get out.
And bite...this bird loves to attack...and God forbid you get near my husband...you are toast.

But, BFH was here to stay.

About 2 years ago, BFH gave us quite a surprise. For about 2 weeks, it was continually misbehaving, ripping up newspaper under it's perch, climbing up and down, and not listening at all. I thought, this is it...I've put up with enough from this damn bird...poops, bites, screaming, paper ripping...ENOUGH WAS ENOUGH!

It was the night of the academy awards and I'd had it. I put BFH away in it's cage for the night. A little while later, one of my kid's called us to come running, because the bird was SCREAMING and SCREECHING. BFH was agitated and climbing up and down the perch.

(warning: the following is graphic)
You could see the bird's rear end growing bigger and bigger, when suddenly....PLOP...out of our "Male" bird's behind, an egg came tumbling out.

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT"??? We all screamed. I of course, cried with joy. BFH was a GIRL.

After 12 years of referring to this Bird from Hell as a boy, we were now looking at a girl.

Suddenly everything became clear...BFH was not really a bird from hell. Turns out BFH had long been experiencing gender confusion and PMS. I don't know any other woman who, under these circumstances, would not have been a bitch on wheels as well.

For years, others had been squelching her feminine side, and her God-given right to want to shoot someone's head off during that special time of the month.

Since this discovery, things have definitely calmed down. Once a month we make sure she has infinite amounts of icecream and chocolate and we can safely make it through.

My poor husband can only dream about a day when I will (once a month) be as calm as "the Bird from Hell"