Rachel Wise. Communities editor at Hawke's Bay Today. Staff. 31 March 2016 Hawke's Bay Today Photograph by Paul Taylor HBG 25Feb17 - HBG 04Mar17 -
Then there was the time I came home with a parrot.
Well, actually my husband was the first one to inflict a parrot on our household. It belonged to a family member who had decided to up sticks and travel the country in a mobile home.
The parrot was declared Not
Wanted on Voyage.
I couldn't understand it, really. It wouldn't have taken up much space, so why couldn't it go too?
The first clue should have been the parrot's arrival in a metal pet cage, with some of the paint gnawed off the bars. I missed that clue. Then we unpacked its living quarters - a large steel structure, plus a blanket to drape over it at night. The blanket was chewed full of holes. I missed that clue, too.
The parrot, Sparky, was a sulphur-crested cockatoo. Large, pretty yellow topknot, very tame. Talked.
It was also confused. Having been brought up as a male until it suddenly laid an egg, Sparky referred to herself as "good boy Sparky" and "good girl Sparky" in equal measure. Sometimes in the same sentence.
Sparky had led a charmed life, for a parrot. She was used to being let out to roam freely, and once we'd erected the huge edifice that was her cage in the corner of the lounge, and put her in it, she quickly let us know that Sparkies didn't live in cages.
First, she reached through the bars, opened the door with her claws and strolled out. I put her back and secured the catch with a clothes peg.
Then she reached through, grabbed the clothes peg in her beak and annihilated it. As the peg-bits hit the floor she opened the door and strolled out again, climbing on top of the cage and fluffing out her feathers.
I plucked her off, put her back in and searched out a dog-lead, using the clip to secure the door. The dog-lead itself lasted seconds after she hooked it into the cage and used her beak to snip it into confetti. But the clip had her stumped for a bit.
So she abandoned it, used her beak to unscrew the nuts holding the side of her cage together, and waltzed out.
Henceforth, Sparky lived on the outside of the parrot cage and at times the rest of the family considered locking ourselves safely inside it. She would agree to be parrot-caged at bedtime, and covered with the increasingly-chewed blanket, but come morning ear shattering screams alerted us to Sparky's desire to be let out.
Mostly, let out included kicked out, because as fast as she could shred a clothes peg, Sparky could also decimate library books, handbags, trout fishing rods and the rubber seal around the fridge door. She was a whizz at stripping wallpaper. If you turned your back on a pen or pencil you'd return to a little pile of plastic slivers, or kindling for a tiny fire.
It was like living with a school of piranha.
Outside, she chased the cats, pruned small trees to stumps and customised any footwear left on the back step. We got used to walking around in Jandals that looked like unfinished jigsaw puzzles.
Sparky liked to go and see the chooks, hanging off the side of their enclosure and shouting at them until they went off the lay. Visiting children were warned to keep their shoes on, as she had a "thing" for bare toes and would actually laugh as she chased her victims across the lawn.
The feathery beast climbed anything that was climbable, including the house, and I'd often look out the window to see her hanging upside down from the guttering looking back at me.
Back then we had a TV aerial and she would climb that too, but she never did work out how get back down. I'd hear her bellowing (as would everyone within a 5km radius) and she'd be hanging by her beak from the aerial, pedalling her feet wildly in mid-air looking for a foothold. That was my cue to get out the ladder and go and save her.
It wasn't all shredded possessions, noise and feathers though. Just mostly.
Sparky was very fond of food. Open a packet of chips and she'd materialise at your elbow, peer into your face and ask "what have you got?" Ignore her and she'd sidle close, snuggle in endearingly and add "I love you". Who could resist?
Having mastered the cat door, she'd sneak in at mealtimes and was very nifty at scrambling on to the table, trudging through your mashed potatoes and making off with your lamb chop.
Sparky could also swear.
But only at me, and only when nobody else was around to hear it.
"Sparky keeps hurling abuse at me" I told the family. They didn't believe me. I was highly insulted that they would take a parrot's word over mine, but after about a year of verbal terrorism she finally put her scaly foot in it.
I was lying in bed reading a book. My husband was on the far side of the bedroom bent over and rummaging through his sock drawer in search of the elusive "matching pair".
Sparky marched up the hallway, beaked-and-clawed her way up the duvet on to the bed and called me a very loud, rude name.
"There!" I exclaimed to my husband. "She does swear at me!"
He stood up, Sparky saw him and retreated down the duvet, back down the hallway and I heard the cat door bang as she shot outside. She never swore at me again.
Eventually, after several years of tyranny, a friend offered us an escape route. Sparky was laying eggs like a battery hen and much as they were very cute little eggs, they were not going to hatch unless she managed to find a mate.
Friend had a brother. Brother had an aviary and many parrots . . . including a male sulphur crested cockatoo. Sparky was going to find a home with her own kind.
We were actually sad to see her go, but reminders of Sparky were never far away. Wafts of library-book-confetti drifted from under the furniture, shreds of wallpaper blew in the breeze and there are still hunks out of the weatherboards on the front porch.
We got messages back .
"Sparky has nearly stopped trying to rip her husband's head off - things are looking promising!" we heard.
A few years later, I met another sulphur crested cockatoo. It had a habit of undoing the nuts on its cage and letting itself out.
I told the owner - oh, we had one that did that.
She replied "would you like this one?"
It took some effort to get the cage into my little two seater sports car. The parrot, however, travelled home quite nicely in my lap.