I’m around our African Grey Parrot 8-12 hours most days, so I try to teach him things. He likes peanut butter, so I’ll give him a tiny bit and say “peanut butter” and he learns to associate the word with the item. Then, when he says, “peanut butter” I give him a bit as a reward. Fun times.
I recently offered him some orange juice. I poured some into a small coffee cup, said “juice” and offered it to him. He loved the OJ, gulping down almost an ounce! Over time he’s learned the word and I give him a few swallows when he requests it.
I’m at work now and everyone heard him saying, “juice juice juice juice” so I pour some in my cup and everyone watched him guzzle down a few swallows. This left me with 98% of a cup of OJ, which I finished. One woman was totally grossed out. She thinks I’ll drop dead by the end of the day. I explained that I do this all the time and she is just aghast.
There is a vast difference between getting squicked out by something and there being an actual physical/biological threat. Most people don’t want to discern between the two. Like the difference between “this is an aggressive, venomous spider” and “I am irrationally afraid of a tiny harmless animal I can squash with my shoe.”
Does your parrot carry a zoonotic disease? Do you have a compromised immune system? No? Then I would say, she is just one of those squicky people, more to be pitied than censured, even though I generally just go straight to censure myself.
People mouths are pretty filthy, too. I’ve seen more cautions in pet information about people spreading their germs to their parrots than vice versa.
Most parrot people I know (both avian and human) wind up doing what you did, sharing cups or bits of food in part because parrots can be quite clever at the distract-the-human-and-snatch-a-tidbit game.
That said, yes, there is a non-zero chance of one of you picking something up from the other. Assuming you’re both healthy adults with intact immune systems this is unlikely to be a problem. But it could be.
The best precaution is not to share tidbits or cups when one or the other of you is sick, but otherwise, you’ve probably already cross-contaminated each other at this point and are largely immune to each other’s microfauna.
I can understand the “ewww” reaction. That same beak has doubtlessly nibbled on the bird’s feathers, chewed on food that’s been left sitting out (i.e. a dish of bird food), and come in contact with dozens of germ-laden surfaces.
However, equating gut reaction with scientific fact is a BAD IDEA. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.
Birds are typically carriers of salmonella, but you are not likely to get a significant dose of the bacteria by handling and interacting with the bird in the way you describe.
If you allowed him to contaminate some high-risk foodstuff (I dunno, whipped cream maybe), then stored that food improperly so that the bacteria could reproduce, you could get food poisoning.
I actually have an interest in Salmonella. Parrots rarely are a source of human infection, and typically parrots shedding the organism are clinically ill.
Poultry and reptiles are a real Salmonella threat, however. I eat eggs, sometimes without cooking, from our hens, though.
We usually dine with Rocco. He’s pretty cool with waiting for me to put his portion of dinner into his cup. If we are eating something he really loves (like chicken wings) he’ll fly over to the table and get grabby.
