We have been staying at the neighbor's house while they were gone on vacation for the past three weeks. They are home now and we are moved back home. Running back and forth, taking care of everything there and everything here has nearly disabled me. I am down in my back for the most part but am getting better, I think.
I have mentioned the neighbor's parrot whom I adore before, but this is the rest of the story. She is temperamental to say the least, very moody. She will flirt with you until you fall for her cute ways, then when you try to touch her she will take off your finger.
She loves my husband and responds to him better than to me. She says "hello" every time he walks into the room. I can be with her all day and she does very little talking but the minute he walks in, she won't shut-up. However, when he puts his arm into her cage she quickly jumps on board but always ends up biting him at some point for no apparent reason. Her bites to my husband have only resulted in bruising.
She had only bitten me once when I first met her, but I have handled her a lot since then with no problems. When I walk up to her she will lower her head and press it against the cage for me to scratch her head. I get her out of her cage quite often if all of their dogs are outside or in their pet taxi's.
One night, I can't remember which one but it was right before the neighbor's were scheduled to fly home. My husband was on the computer in their computer room and I was sitting on the couch in that same room. All of their dogs were in pet taxi's for the night, my dog was loose in the house but I had shut the door because I had Lolita on my shoulder.
She walked down my arm and buried her face against my chest. I was scratching her head and neck and pulling on her feathers and she was purring like a cat. We had been doing this for some time and each time I tried to stop she would find my hand and put her head under it again.
My husband got up to leave the room and left the door open. Chloe, my dog, came in which wasn't a big deal but I didn't want her in there, so I yelled for my DH to please get her out and close the door.
Well, when he came back he raised his voice at Chloe because she didn't come out as soon as he asked her to and Lolita nipped me but it really didn't hurt that bad, so I didn't react. He yelled at Chloe again and this time she went out and he shut the door loudly. Lolita bit me again and this time she took a hunk of flesh off of my index finger's knuckle.
My reaction was to push her backward off of my arm and onto the couch but she managed to stay on my arm and grabbed the hand of the arm that she was standing on in the webbing between my thumb and index finger. Then she bit me twice more on the thumb. This time I put her on the floor and she walked off calling me names and mumbling to herself.
She finally walked back over to where I was sitting and I put my arm down for her to come back up on, but she wouldn't do it. I was bleeding anyway, so I yelled for my dear husband again to get the hand held perch and come and get her. He stuck his head back in the room and seen that I was bleeding, so he went after the perch and got her put back into her cage and bandaged me up.
I was very upset because I didn't want her not to like me. So he got her out of the cage with the hand held perch and he brought her over to me and she came onto my arm as soon as I offered it. We didn't have any more problems after that and I managed to control my fear.
The bites weren't too severe but I did get a little infection in the hole that she made in the web area between my thumb and finger. I still love her, she is just a normal parrot, and I have started begging for one of my own but I don't think my DH will give in on this one. The neighbors did have will's made out recently and we get the dogs and the birds.
Here are some pictures that I took of Lolita taking a bath, she is a Yellow-naped Amazon.
