i'd like to discuss our bird for a moment, if i may. the subject comes to mind because, as the running trend in our household at present seems to be 'girls, girls, girls!' there's been some light shed recently on our once sexually-ambiguous quaker parrot, fezzig.
let me backtrack for a sec, here: i had gone through a phase, upon my return from africa, where i really, really wanted a parrot. don't ask me why, i just did. anyway, long story short, kris eventually caved and we ended up purchasing fezzig in mid-november of 2005 from a pet store in lansing, MI.. for those of you who are unaware of such things, its practically impossible to determine the sex of a bird unless you have its DNA taken... which costs upwards of $200. neither kris nor myself cared enough about this to find out whether fezzig was into dudes or chicks.
there are telling signs, however. birds who tend to bond to female humans better are usually males, while those who'd rather hang out with males are generally females. opposites attract. that ol' tale. fezzig immediately bonded to kris, who therefore did most of the early training with it, etc. and, because of this, we figured fezzig was a male. don't get me wrong, here - to date, the bird and i get along just fine, but it definitely prefers kris when it comes to talking, etc.
at least it did.
rather recently, i noticed fezzig's been rubbing up against - or, backing up and rubbing its ass against - a lot of its toys and perches in its cages with its tail straight up in the air. in a rather comical and promiscuous manner. pushing three years now, fezzig's right about at sexual maturity for a bird. and, while it might be pretty disgusting to observe such behavior, its all perfectly normal. what was out of the norm, however, was fezzig's changing attitude towards kris. being the genius i am, i attributed to an animal's weird sixth sense about kris carrying another lifeform in her stomach. you hear about that sorta thing from time to time, and animals always are the first to sense natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and the like. right? okay then. anyway, fezzig started preferring yours truly, and began snipping at kris given the opportunity. it even became less interested in hanging out with us off its cage. stuff like that.
i decided to read up on this, being the scholar that i am, and became suddenly aware that fezzig was showing the telltale signs of a female bird. the tail up in the air while rubbing itself against toys, the growing hostility towards females of any species, etc.
so fezzig, as it turns out now, is probably a female. and, for those mathematicians out there, that means that yours truly now gets the privilege of living with three chicks come june.
cowabunga.
- brian
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