Hercules is joining the ranks of the birds, wrecking havoc! He has been back inside only a handful of days yet figured out how to escape. He destroyed two plants and damaged a third. He kicked soil into my carpet, knocked my laptop off its stand, unplugged my router, unrolled a section of wrapping paper and tore it up and chipped away at my drywall (more spackle in order). After seeing the destruction, I found him napping in my closet. He looked so peaceful, all worn out.
We've been having a bit of a destructive week. Monday Manzi found my iphone unattended while I had a bathroom break. I have an otterbox cover, so that absorbed the damage. Given that Manzi had an entire minute alone with the phone, he did surprisingly little damage (only the rubber cap over the sound control was removed and shredded).
Yesterday Manzi finally realized that the wheat and paper mâché toys in his cage are not ready to eat him alive (he's been terrified of those and hasn't gone to the perch where they are located for 5 weeks!). When I came home from work I saw he had completely destroyed both toys. Even though Manzi was terrified of the toys, Maui could care less about them.
Today he's chewed off the rubber scroll wheel on a mouse and he's chewed up an earring. Previous to this week, he was being very undestructive. Even last weekend he was calm. He sat quietly next to me nearly the entire days of Saturday and Sunday (I was home nearly all weekend). I was almost worried that he was so peaceful, but I did enjoy his calm company.
Maui still hasn't successfully figured out how to climb down the rope to the floor. I put her on the rope several times, but she is afraid of it. After watching me put her on it and making her climb it, Manzi went over and climbed both down, then back up the rope. Like he was demonstrating it to her or something. Manzi can easily fly down too. I take Maui off her cage every day, and about once per week she'll fly to the ground and wander around. Still, she's not as potty trained as Manzi, so when she's running around the ground, she leaves presents on the linoleum.
I took Manzi out to fly yesterday. I used his leg leash. He was very excited to go outside and held his wings out while walking to the open field. I set him on the grass and had him fly to me. He made a couple of those flights. Then I decided to send him out from me, have him fly around, then come back. He has done this successfully several times in the recent past without reaching the end of the leash (it is a long fishing line).
I sent Manzi out, he began to circle around, but then reached the end of the leash (I had it a bit shorter than normal since we were in a different field with trees nearby), which caused him to fly in a circle around me. He couldn't make the turn to come back in towards me and continued in a very large circle. He tired out pretty quickly and landed on the grass.
I called him back to me and he didn't come. So I sat down and proceeded to eat my lunch. Manzi seemed upset and chewed on the leg leash. After about 10 minutes of us ignoring each other, Manzi began to run (yes, with his little legs) towards me. It took him another 5 minutes to reach me! He refused to fly, except the last 30 feet when he finally flew to my hand. I realized that Manzi must have been pretty scared when he did the circle flights and emergency landed in the grass. Sometimes I forget that he can be very sensitive. Because he wasn't happy with his last flight, he was hesitant to try it again and preferred to walk, which isn't an easy task for a parrot in thick grass. In the past, Manzi has gone really high up in a tree refusing to come down. Then he'll try, but miss me and go up in another tree. I thought Manzi was being a bit stubborn, or happy in the tree. It must be that Manzi is scared of his misses and hesitant to try again. This only happened when Manzi would first start to free fly outside. It has been a long time since he's free flown though, so he must be lacking confidence.
I am afraid to fly him without the leash with our winter coming on. We're already getting nights below freezing. I had hoped that I could free fly Manzi this summer since he has been doing so well with his recalls, but now I don't think that is going to happen.
I watched the little shih-tzu again. This time she interacted with Manzi in a positive way. They played quite a bit together. Last time Manzi stayed up high out of her reach, but this time he often flew to the ground and would run after her. She'd run away, then Manzi would turn around and let her chase him. He wasn't aggressive like the first time her interacted with her. Daisy was also very sweet about it. Once, Manzi did fly down right in front of her and she jumped on top of him and "mouthed" him. That scared Manzi a bit and he immediately flew out of her reach for a while. That scared me as well as I thought Manzi might get hurt, but after 10 minutes or so he was back on the couch running around with her.
When I first brought Daisy in, we filled up her food dish and Maui went over to it to check it out. Daisy could only sit back and watch. She didn't dare interrupt Maui:
So, Rocky was very popular with my friends, but not so much with the birds. Rocky is a 100-lb labrador, who I watched for an extended weekend. I took some photos of when I first brought him to my place. He did go look at the birds, but afterward he paid almost no attention to the birds. His owner told me he had never been around birds, but in general, Rocky has never paid much attention to any other animals, not even other dogs.
At one point, Manzi even jumped on Rocky's back. Rocky was startled, and Manzi flew off immediately. Maui was always standing at the edge of the cage waiting for Rocky to walk by so she could have a chance to reach out and bite him. Maui tried that all day long. Sometimes it was pretty funny because Rocky would walk by and then his tail would catch Maui and twice it knocked her off the edge of the cage to the floor. At that point, she'd run after him. Rocky wouldn't even notice and I didn't want him get any bites so I would call him away from the kitchen.
When Maui got swatted dog, she usually squealed and instead of being scared, it would just fuel her anger and determination towards getting Rocky.
Here is Rocky noticing Maui for the first time:
