Monday, May 3, 2010

Long denied, but not forgotten

I have been neglecting Manzi's journey on the road to fame by not posting in far too long. Currently, we are doing frequent flight indoors, but have still not flown outdoors. My nightmares of Manzi getting taken away by a hawk or eagle has me continue to make excuses of why I haven't brought him outside. Manzi is getting more and more agitated as we go on walks with beautiful weather and him being stuck on my hand by a leg leash.

Here is a funny story: Manzi always wants to be on my shoulder when I am in the kitchen. I allow him to be there for a while, but he never fails to get overly curious and began reaching to items that I have in my hand. This is especially prevalent while washing dishes. I finally got tired of him hanging from the front of my shirt trying to reach dishes, so I put a lot of soap on a dish and let him bite it. He right away grabbed it in his beak, but half a second later dropped it and shock his head as he tasted the soap. He did not learn his lesson. Within a minute he was grabbing for dishes again. I repeated the soap trick. After several times, he stopped grabbing for dishes; But, the next time I was washing dishes he did the same thing. I soaped up the dishes and gave them to him several times per day over the next week. This morning when I was washing dishes, he flew to my shoulder, but he did not try to grab the dishes. I even held up a tempting wooden spoon and he just shook his head (something he does when he doesn't want whatever it is that I am offering him). I was amazed that he finally learned that he is going to get a mouth of soap if he grabs at the dishes I am washing. Now I can happily wash dishes with him on my shoulder and not hanging down the front of my shirt grabbing at everything.

Does anyone sabotage their children's efforts in a similar way?

1 comments:

amos said...

Ha ha, I'm glad he finally figured it out so I don't have to report you to the humane society for poisoning your pet with dish soap ;)

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