A Dunking Experience

Regular readers of this blog know how much we parrots love dunking. Sometimes we do it to soften up our food for eating, but often we do it with no thought of eating in mind. You could say it’s more of an art form. So, anyhow, the other day as I was enjoying a bowl of soup with my person, I spied out of the corner of my ever-vigilant parrot eye the perfect dunking material—it was an entire sheet of paper that had been crumpled up and left lying on the table. Well naturally I grabbed it with my beak, hauled it over to the soup bowl (it wasn’t heavy but was quite a bit longer than me) and dropped it right into the soup. But then, just as I was stepping back to admire my work, what do you think my person did? She picked the paper up and threw it away! Those people. They just don’t know art when they see it.

Dunking

I thought I’d blog about dunking today since a question came up about that recently. Yes, it’s true that I love to dunk. If there’s a cup of tea around, I start dunking—bits of bagels, pieces of shredded wheat, pellets, whatever I can get my beak on. Partly it’s to soften up the food for eating, but mostly it’s for the fun of watching the food float around in the tea cup. I only actually end up eating just a small portion of what I dunk. And it isn’t just me. Most parrots dunk. Give a parrot a water dish, and she (he) will start dunking away. Some parrots don’t stop at food but will put toys, pieces of paper, anything, into a water dish. Unfortunately, I don’t have a water dish in my cage anymore except on special occasions. My person replaced it with a water bottle. Hmmmm, I wonder why?