I suppose it started with the jingle ball situation about two weeks ago, when Maggie (by dint of some intense, aggro workouts on the hanging rings) detached the little plastic jingle-bell-ball-thing from said rings. Of course this was seen as a brand-new, hence excellent, cockatiel toy; she was tossing and shaking and dropping it, and pushing it around on the floor with her beak, and generally acting llike a 14-year-old boy who’s recently discovered his choad. She even carried it to her doorway and dropped it on me a few times–yes, on purpose. Well, I earned to play Budgie Ball from two of that sport’s most acclaimed masters, Blue Billy
Beep and Alias Alibi Erickson-Pop (widely recognized as the best avian athlete of his era), so I figured I’d be ready to compete if challenged.
But! BUT! In what seemed like three days max, our Maggie’s behaviour was transformed. She got even touchier and more imperious than she’d been just a week earlier; much quicker to castigate the gauche or loutish ways of humans with her flattened-quiff, lizardy hiss of put-upon superiority.She kind of reminded me of how the lady chickens used to get when they wanted to turn their daily output into wee bannies and biddies. Broody, was what my Grandma called it.
Of course, cockatiels are all quite weird little beasts, each one of them crazy as mudfuck in a charming and comical and mostly affable way. That’s why people keep them as pets, ainnit? And our psittacoid princess is strange even for a cockatiel.
Then one afternoon we heard her singing to herself or talking to herself in a way she’d never done prior to just then/just now: a soft liquidy trilling, rather breathy even though it seemed under her breath, andimminently female-sounding. She did it for long stretches of her waking day.
And she commenced to squatting on the floor of her cage, sort of wedging her butt into a corner. I did not like this at all. When a pet bird takes to the floor, it’s all too often a sign that she’s dangerously ailing.
Then the alien artefact which explained everything manifested itself–delicate,
translucent, lightbulb white; about the size of the foil wrapped milk chocolate eggs Hershey’s starts selling six weeks before Easter. A cockatiel egg!
That strange wee object became one of a pair the very next day, She carefully face-pushed them into a corner of her cage and has been guarding them from our ill-natured attention like a dinosaurian Doberman watchdog (with cinnamon pearl feathers). A third one materialized less than two hours ago this very evening; We’re waiting for her to nose that one onto the pile, too
Our little girl, at approximately two years old is now a grown-up young lady. Her tetchy and paranoid manner of late has been hormone-based. Like a teenage girl whose own ripening has driven her crazy, she’s just…a winged wee womanly fauna. What seemed to be a mean-turning and looked like possible ill health is just her channeling the eternal mysterious cycle of life.
Which, while wondrous, is without much future or utility–for our Maggie will live her whole life a virgin.
We’re doing all the right stuff according to our pet-bird books and the Crazy Ol’ Cockatiel Lady message board I lurk on – feeding her real good and giving her some space, and leaving her eggie-weggies strictly alone. Our sources all say that if we let her fuss with her infertile ovals until she loses interest on her own, she’ll be back to her sweet funny li’l self fairly soon…for almost a year until she gets all hormonal and maternal again.
Pets, we’ve really gotta love 'em. Either that or else give 'em all to a roadside zoo.`
Not guilty enough to actually help her rectify the matter of course. Have you considered easing my conscience by acquiring a mate for Maggie?