Shopping for One Tough Bird
If you look at the majority of my books at our house, you will notice a strange series of holes punched around the edges. You will also find similar markings around the edges of CD inserts, letters, bills, and other important documents. This is not some new way of identification or claims to ownership that I have devised. Actually the boss in our home, Sofi, our cockatiel, makes these markings for his own purpose of identification or just to be plain destructive. Sofi is what you might call a demolition crew on steroids. We believe that if he was left out of his cage and to himself one day while we were at work, we would return to nothing but rubble. If there is a wall in his way, he will "beak" his way through to the other side. If there is a dog in his way as he marches across the floor, he will begin to "beak" the dog until she moves. If you drop a piece of paper on the floor, it will be shredded within 5 seconds (10 seconds if it is the size of a phone book). And if there is not any paper on the floor, then Sofi will push the magazines or bills off the table so that there will be. At that point he then begin to shred them faster than you can say "recycle". He must feel that this is his mission in life. If you have ever seen the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons and noticed the behavior of "Gopher"- that is Sofi.
There are four events that have contributed to Sofi's dysfunctional behavior. First, it has to do with "his" name. When Sofi arrived as a bundle of joy 9 years ago, we were told he was a she. Therefore, we named him "Sofi". As he got older, it became obvious to us that he was a male. We imagine that the other birds tease him because of his name and this leads to him being one angry bird. But he has other reasons for being angry. This leads us to the second event, a single incident when Joyce accidentally sat down on Sofi one evening has also contributed to his emotional state. Sofi squawked and hissed at Joyce for hours afterwards. Every time Joyce even looked at Sofi, he would spread his wings out and hiss. He kept his back turned to her the rest of the evening. Third, the presence of a Shar-Pei was brought into Sofi's territory after Sofi had already set up his kingdom. It was with this in mind that Sofi had to show Sammy (our Shar-Pei) who is boss. Sofi continues to remind Sammy by pulling her tail or chasing her away from her treats every chance he gets. And fourth, Sofi proved to be a tough bird when he survived a flight into the hot boiling grease in a frying pan. This has left him with a few missing talons and swollen feet yet he still beaks on.
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