There were lemon-coconut cupcakes for breakfast this morning. The girls are watching Magic Schoolbus and I’m here in my home office, cowering.
Remember that tiny adorable ball of feathers we brought home in January? Well, he’s become a 30 gram bundle of terror.
There’s nothing like the sight of my dear husband, hunched over with his hands in the air yelling “GET HIM OFF OF ME” while I come running, hands covered by the cuffs of my sleeves to extract this tiny thing from the neckline of his shirt.
As cute and funny as he is, BB is a biter. BB is biting the hand that feeds him and we can’t figure out why.
I have been googling “aggressive budgie” and “biting budgie” for a couple of weeks now and have yet to come up with some truly helpful advice.
Apparently he’s trying to show us who’s the cock of the walk, or should I say, boss of the flock. He’s trying to climb the social ladder with every sharp little nip. Our job is to show HIM that we’re the alpha birds in charge around here. How? We’re supposed to pretend that the biting doesn’t hurt. Ha. Ha.
I can’t believe I’m playing mind games with a budgie.
The little bugger has figured out how to get to us. He goes for the cuticles, the fleshy part around the knuckles, and the skin between the thumb and the pointy finger (there must be a name for it). I’ve learned that it hurts less if I make a fist.
What’s worse … if he’s sitting on our shoulder he’ll sometimes nip the skin on our neck. I don’t keep him on my shoulder unless I’m wearing a high collar. Or a scarf. I am terrified he’s going to rip out one of my earrings.
He grabbed me rather unexpectedly on the hand this morning (and held on) and almost landed in my coffee cup. (Which was thankfully cold and almost empty.)
I asked the breeder what she thought and she told us it was probably just a phase. He is, after all, still a kid. She suggested he might be uncomfortable about something and that we should move him into a different room. This isn’t something we can do. There isn’t a good space for him anywhere else. We made room for him in the office (where I spend most of my day) so he wouldn’t get lonely.
Gah! Any bird psychologists out there?
