What About Nick?

Nicodemus or Nick as he is affectionately called is my wonderful almost 14 year old friend and partner. Nick has been with me since he was about 4 weeks old. I was an experienced hand feeder of many parrots and with the help of Phoebe Linden (via reading her wonderful works on abundance weaning)I sucessfully raised a wonderful parrot as naturally as possible in a domestic environment.

Sadly, when Nick was a little over a year old, I had to go to work outside the home and even with my husband home all day to help keep him company and take him to his tree and back a few times a day, Nick began pulling out his tail feathers, flight feathers and chest feathers. About 6 years ago, I had sustained a neck injury while employed at a mixed animal veterinary practice and had a three level cervical spine fusion. Nick was so thrilled to have me home full-time again. He slowly stopped plucking and now pretty much full featherd he thrives on me working on my laptop in the living room with him and Koko most of the day and going out for fresh air and sunshine on the deck as the weather permits.

Nick is very in tune with me and my emotions. He will bug me terribly by asking me "Are you happy?" until I answer in a cheery tone, "Yeah!" He will not accept any less then enthusiasm in my answer to him. He KNOWS when I am faking it too! lol But seriously, it is pretty much impossible not be happy around him and even if I am in a bad mood or in more pain then I like to deal with he makes me happy by being the wonderful intelligent, caring creature he is.

Nick helps me the dogs by telling them "Quiet" or "Enough". He knows and calls them by their names (though they rarely pay too much attention to him). If someone is coming up our gravel drive, Nick will be the first to "bark" and get the dogs going in alerting us to their presence.

Want to share stories about your parrots? Please send me any stories and or photos of your birds and I will post them here to share with the world. :-)