New Year's Resolutions

Well, it’s resolution time again. For the new year, I resolve to do my duty as a pet parrot as well as I can. That means:
- keeping predators away from the house and, especially, my cage
- keeping the microwave oven entertained by beeping along with it
- helping out with the laundry by perching on the drying rack and chewing the clothes
as they dry
- keeping my person company by following her everywhere around the house
- getting inside the refrigerator and raiding the walnut stash.
OK, that last one isn’t exactly a duty but, still, it is a resolution. What about you? What are your resolutions for the new year?

Movies

As a general rule, I don’t pay much attention to TV or movies. They just don’t have much that attracts me. My person watches a lot of movies and I like to sit with her while she does that, but I don’t usually watch with her. Instead I spend that time in more productive activities such as chewing holes in her socks or picking up crumbs off the table. However, recently my person brought home some Harry Potter movies and, unlike other movies, these ones are extremely interesting. They have lots and lots of wonderful sounds and we parrots just love interesting sounds. When a Harry Potter movie is on, I sit on my person’s knee and chatter, whoop, beep, and squawk right along with the movie. It’s so much fun. I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend an evening than squawking and whooping along with a Harry Potter movie. What about you? What kinds of movies do you like?

Cereal

That shiny new refrigerator that moved in with us last August turns out to be a pretty nice fellow. It’s lot more generous than that stingy coffeepot, for one thing. Not only does it have walnuts inside, but on top it has a whole stash of cereal, and I just loooooove cereal. I don’t know why it took me so long to notice, but I finally realized that the refrigerator keeps a bag of whole grain flakes on its top. Whole grain flakes are my favorite, so you can imagine what I did as soon as I spied that bag. I flew right up there and starting chewing off a corner to get at those lovely crunchy flakes inside. It didn’t take long, and soon I was munching away. Then, wouldn’t you know it, my person saw what I was doing and took me away from there and put me back in my cage. Hmmmph!!! It’s true that I have cereal in my food dish in my cage, but it’s much more fun to eat it out of the bag, don’t you think? Oh , well, I’m sure I’ll find another chance soon to sneak back to that bag and continue my munching.

Scary Weather

Well, it’s that time of year again, scary snow time. It fell all day yesterday. Now I don’t mind so much not being able to go outside because I really don’t like being in an outside that’s all white. I feel much safer where everything’s green. But that’s not the worst part of snow. The worst part of snow is when it starts acting all predatory and slides off the roof and hits the ground with a big “whuuump!!” Then I have to go flying all around the room to find a safe corner to hide in and then squawk and squawk with all my might to keep that predatory snow away from my cage and my room. You’ve really got to let the snow know who’s boss, otherwise it might just come inside and eat you up. Yep, I’ve certainly got my work cut out for the winter, with all that squawking I have to do to keep the snow away.

Clementines

There’s at least one good thing about winter and that’s clementines. My person just brought home a box full of them from the store. Clementines are so much fun to eat. I stick my beak into a slice and suck up all the juice. Mmmmmmm, juicy! Then, after we’ve eaten all the clementines, I get to play in the box. Chewing up the box is almost as fun as eating the fruit. What about you? Do you like clementines? What kind of fruit do you like to eat in the winter?

Favorite Word

Although I am fond of a number of words, I think I can say without a doubt that my favorite one of all is “treat.” Now that’s a word that really makes my feathers stand up. As soon as I hear my person say it, I run or fly as fast as I can to the perch next to my food dish. I get so excited that I can hardly wait for my person to take a seed treat out of the plastic container and put it in my dish. Then I grab it with my foot and nibble and nibble and nibble……Yummy! A seed treat sure tastes good. I know exactly which shelf the treats are kept on, and anytime my person goes near it, I get a little bit excited. But I have to hear the word “treat” before I know for sure that one is on its way to my dish. What about you? What is your favorite word?

A Useful Piece of Equipment

My person has a printer on her desk, right behind the computer, and I find it to be a very useful piece of equipment. For one thing, I can entertain myself for hours on end chewing the little plastic buttons that sit all along the left-hand edge of the printer’s top. That’s almost as much fun as chewing the little plastic buttons off the TV remote control, which is just about my all-time favorite thing to do. The other thing the printer is good for is that by climbing on top of it, I can reach the books that my person keeps behind it. So far, I’ve chewed along the top edges of several of the books and am working my way through the back cover of one of them. I’m almost half-way through with it now, and when I’m done with that, there will be the whole inside of the book to chew up! The other thing I can reach by standing on top of the printer is the pen holder. It’s really fun to pull pens out of the can and drop them behind the printer. And when I’m lucky enough to find a nice chewy wooden pencil in there, then I can really have a chew fest. Of course, when pencil splinters or stray pens or pieces of chewed-up book just happen to fall inside the printer, then there are paper jams and my person gets kind of upset. I don’t know why, though. I mean, it’s not as if the best part about a printer is the printing. There’s just so much more that you can do with it.