Birds, Beak Bubbles, Blah!...

You gotta hand it to us humans. When it comes to our quest for mastery over the animal kingdom we sure can be an inventive bunch. I’ve come across some fairly ridiculous inventions directed towards the gullible parrot owner in my time but the `Beak Bubble’ might just take the cracker. Check out the magnificence of this little S&M number turned Parrot Grooming Support Device at the Parrots and Props website - http://www.parrotsandprops.com/BeakBubble.php to see what I’m talkin’ about.  I particularly like the unintended self-confessed insanity plea tucked in there on that page with the whole `The Lord made me do it’ vibe. Nice. I think the English used to use a similar device back in the 15th century on Gallic intruders. Inspiration for parrot props can be found anywhere peoples – even in the artefacts of deepest darkest medieval history! 

But seriously - What you’ve got here with this sort of contraption folks is perhaps the pinnacle example of a whole bunch of warped reasoning when it comes to `solving’ perceived problems with keeping parrots.  Whilst the aesthetics of it all are wrong enough as it is, you know what? For me the line of thinking that bugs me most isn’t the desperate attempt to avoid being bitten by a parrot (I can appreciate that), but the whole concept of `grooming’ a pet bird in the first place. If parrots aren’t subjected to the problems of anthropomorphism enough, they then have to face a growing reference point of `Poochism’ – the only term I can come up with to describe the apparent socially embedded way of thinking of the husbandry and maintenance of a parrot in the same way society tends to think of a pet dog. These days you can even get fresh `cooked’ meals in the form of canned parrot diets to stick in the microwave and serve warm – hmmm, just like you get at the woodland diner I suppose. Nail trims? Sure – can’t have those pesky little prickly toes of theirs walking up and down your arm. Let’s just forget how important it is for a parrot to have nice sharp toenails for its perching confidence and how darn easy it is to make an absolute mess of a trust account with a parrot by trying to file them away. Ever clipped your own nail and just been a few millimeters out? Hurts like hell don’t it? Second hmmm. Remember the `Birdie Diaper'? It looks like a little cloth bucket you strapped under the tail and around your parrot's vent to `catch the poops' - I'm not shitting you, that was a marketed product! (pun definitely intended there folks). And let’s not get me started on harnesses. Just like a walkin’ the dog – except, hang on... it’s a parrot. I know the whole harness concept has plenty of buyers, including many of my peer trainers, but I’m just not going for it and I’ll leave the debateable justifications up to those that endorse their use. My perspective gets informed by what I’m now seeing in a growing number of clients at my behaviour clinics seeking advice on how to undo the damage to the trust they had with their bird after forcing things like harnesses on them. I had two such cases of failed harness use come into the clinic just this weekend gone. (God knows what I’d be seeing with widespread use of the `Beak Bubble’. Then again, apparently God does know what I’d be seeing – He was the one who put the idea in the head of the person who invented it).When you actually stop to think about the mechanics of it all, It’s just such an invasive expectation to have on a parrot and their threshold of tolerating the poor application of such devices diminishes so much faster than the impatient owner is ever prepared to recognise. Therein lies the problem.

They’re birds folks – not dogs. Give ‘em space, flight, opportunities to forage for fresh food, a chance to engage with you as their carer in a trusting and non-invasive manner, fun interactions, trick training, whatever – but just not a lifestyle that sets them up with expectations we have of highly domesticated animals that these guys simply are not.