Lala, the princess Lala was hatched in June 1998 and came to our house in September. She thinks that she is a princess, behaves like a princess and expects all of us to treat her like a princess. When she wants to come out for a poop, she rings a bell in her cage. Like servants in Victorian age, we go to attend the princess. She loves chewing dry pasta, branches, remote controls and the corners of the furniture. She also likes spending time chasing toys and scolding them. These are wooden balls, plastic beads, small stuffed toys, a salt shaker and of course, bells.

Like other Poicephalus, Lala loves hanging upside down. She just hangs still and looks at the world upside down for a while, or preens herself whilst hanging by one foot. Her favourite place to hang from is a willow basket which is hung from a balustrade. From there she can see everyone including wild birds in the garden but not be seen.  To be able to hang well, she grooms her nails with her beak. We once trimmed her nails and found they were already sharp again the next day. We gave up. She feels secure with sharp nails that grip better. That's more important than having smooth skin on our hands.

Self Confidence She has shown no fear to any domestic electric appliances, such as the hairdryer, laundry machine, dish washer, microwave. She even flew to a microwave, and curiously watched the food turning inside. After all, she was incubator-hatched, so she probably got used to motor sounds, I suppose.  She used to attack a vacuum cleaner anytime I was using it. She used to fly to my hip, hanging upside down there and attack its hose like Indiana Jones. One day she attacked the hose so much that her face was sucked in. In a less than a second I retrieved her, and luckily she was fine. This was her first defeat. She realized that there were some things she can't win in this world, and stopped this dangerous 'Indiana Jones game' after this incident.

Play gym She loves clambering around this untreated beech wine rack; hanging upside down, dropping stuffed toys and shouting to wild birds outside. This is her portable play gym too. It travels with her around the house. Like other Poicephalus, she loves hiding under towels. When her bedtime approaches, she insists on hiding under her towel for a while before going back to her cage.  All my birds are jealous to some extent, but Lala is the most jealous. She doesn't like me feeding other birds, this even includes the Zebra finches and wild birds. She usually flies to the bird being fed and tries to take the food.

Lala is allowed to be on the dining table while we eat something that she can have. The only table manner she has to respect is not to stand on the plates. Surprisingly she obeys it. Most foods have to be rationed, otherwise she gobbles up too much. We put a small amount of food on the edge of a plate, and from there she eats it. If she can't reach it, she goes to the other side. Even there, if she can't reach it, she goes around the plate until her humans notice. However, she has her own plan sometimes. She does a kind of patrol on the table whilst showing no interest in our food. When we are distracted by wild birds or something else in the garden for a second or two, she dashes to the food and tries to take it away.  What a sweetie she is!

Lala's Goofy talk
Lala has said a lots of words in a Goofy voice, but most of them were so unclear that nobody understands them, but me. The words I understood so far were 'Kiwi', 'Hello', 'night night' and 'Kiwi, I love you'. She also often says, 'Ugggg dagggg buggggg ggggg dugggg' in a human talking tone. I think that is how she perceives human talking. She, however,  learned a Kakariki song from Tovi together with a Kakariki dance. I will try to teach her talking more seriously. I hope her screeches can be replaced by something more amusing.

Lala is naturally potty trained in her own way
Lala refuses to poop in her cage. She doesn't want to soil her cage. One day she could not hold it anymore, so that she soiled her lower perch which she uses to get feeders, then she took a long route to get the feeders to avoid her poop. She obviously thinks that poops aren't nice. But she does poop from our shoulders when we didn't notice her message. After that, she usually walks to the other shoulder to keep her feet clean. Clever girl!
 

Poops and Day cage From the beginning, it was easy to potty train her. We just had to take her to a play gym anytime we pick her up from the cage. But we are very worried about her health when we have to leave her in the cage for a while. She tries to hold her poop for a couple of hours, and gets desperate. Although we asked vets, there is nothing we can do. She still keeps this worrying habit. Summer 1999, we made some progress on this. We set up a day cage (W90 x D60 x H90, see the right picture) for her in front of her favourite window in the kitchen/dining room. She seems comfortable to poop in this cage. So she now has two cages: a sleeping cage and a day cage. The day cage is big enough to hang one or two baskets, a couple of ladders and several branches; she enjoys a rough romp with them.

The picture right is her sleeping cage - L64 x D43 x H75cm (the model in the cage is Kiwi).  It has thick bars, the bar space is 2 cm. I chose it because it is very easy to wash; the top part can be lifted easily and can be placed it inside a bath tub. It has four holes for feeders and a big door. The metal tray is easy to use. Well designed and well made.  Kiwi and Lala's Love Story Kiwi was completely smitten by Lala at first sight. We don't know how he understood Lala is female (her breeder and we think Lala is a girl). But he is very scared of her beak. After all, she is a bigger bird with much bigger beak than Kiwi. Kiwi becomes wobbly and completely lunatic in front of her, and bites at our hands in a dreamy way. So we try to keep them apart whilst they are out of theirs cages. Kiwi shares a room with Tovi, and Lala has her own room. But Kiwi hangs from the corner of his cage from where he can just see Lala's cage in a mirror on the wall in the landing, so long as the doors of two rooms are open. Kiwi really loves Lala.

Kiwi was so greedy that he used to eat regurgitated food by himself while Lala was waiting to be fed. Lala won't allow him to get away with this however! She just threatens him with an open beak and jumps towards him. During Kiwi's regurgitating, Tovi always comes very close and observes them like a pervert. Tovi is a real Kakariki with pride, he won't feed a parrot from Africa,  he feeds Kiwi's cage wire instead!

Although Lala begs food from everyone, both humans and birds, she never gives to anybody. It does not occur to this little princess Lala, I think.

Adolescence
Biting
Before I was bitten by Lala, I had thought that Kiwi was capable of biting me. I changed my opinion on this. He can't bite, he only nips. Lala was always nippy when we made rustling sounds, when we used the phone and just before she needed to go potty. As all sweet parrot babies become hormonal monsters one day, Lala hit her ugly adolescence at 10 months old; she became more beaky, nippier and less co-operative. While we were arranging her cage, she attacked us viciously. When we put her back to the cage, she had jabbed at us through the bars furiously. We lost our control of her, and almost lost our patience. It was our fault; we had spoilt her. I had tried several methods to discourage her from biting over some months, and finally succeeded.

First, I gave her the evil eye. Did she regret? No way! She gave me the evil eye back, and worse, she seemed to get more furious. After sometime, she refused to step up unless she was given head scratches beforehand. Then, she started nipping us before she stepped up on our hand. Nipping soon became biting. It was really painful when she bit with her self sharpened beak. Innocent blood was shed, and several holes were made on my poor hands. Yet worse was to come. My next approach was giving no response; you will never give any response when your parrot bites you. She only moved to the softest part of the hand and sunk her beak in. I saw her little eyes were checking my response, as biting. She must be able to read my slightest expression. She found my most sensitive part, and bit until she felt the bone in my finger. I had to change my approach again. This time, I tried Mr towel; when she bit, Mr Towel came and gently removed her from the scene of the crime. This certainly stopped her biting, nevertheless she was scared of the towel so much that I had to stop it. I had to think again. While skimming through my thick parrot files, I found that I hadn't tried making a tight fist when she bit. I tried and it worked fine while she was outside her cage. I presented the back of my fist to her face. She couldn't get a grip of the flat skin. You have to move your fist as your parrot moves, otherwise, like Lala, she will find softer parts of the hand to sink her beak into. When she was inside the cage, we still struggled to pick her up with an Egyptian grip without being nipped. We noticed that when the temperature was more than 30 Celsius, she became worse, in contrast to the Kakarikis who wilt when it's above 26 C.
 

A Breakthrough A breakthrough was brought by Greg Glendell's article 'Misunderstood Parrots' (1999). I can't quote the whole article here, but, what I did was that I stopped scratching her head on her request. Instead, I took the initiative and decided when she would be scratched. This worked wonders. In one week, she had learnt that she was not in control any longer, and became much more co-operative.

By the beginning of August 1999, Lala became more manageable, yet we had another hurdle to clear. We planned to go on the-first-ever-since-I-got-a-bird holiday in late August. Although it was only four days, I was very worried about Lala who refused to poop in her cage. This meant the birdsitter had to move her from her sleeping cage to the day cage in the morning and the reverse in the evening. What if she bites him?  I still couldn't trust her wholly. After further research, I decided to stick train her. I used a one meter long thin branch to pick her up from the cage and put her in the desired places. For a couple of days, she was fiercely pecking the branch anytime she was given the UP command. When she finally stepped up on the branch, she lowered her head down and marched to the hand holding it to bite. I lifted the other side of the branch very sharply so that she had to go to the higher side. In one week or so, we were able to move her anytime anywhere we needed without any confrontation. Big progress! And I didn't have to worry about her at all. She liked the birdsitter, and she was happy to be left behind with him. Our holiday was also wonderful; we visited the parrots in Paradise park in Cornwall.

By the beginning of October 1999, she had become a very good pet parrot, after all. She still bit whenever she heard rustling sounds, but that's about it. I have also read other Poicephalus parrots bite when they hear similar sounds in magazines and chats, so we thought it was an instinct. (Can somebody explain why they do? )  We had also learnt her behaviours well so that we could predict, to a large extent, her next move. One amazing thing I would like to add here was that through all her life with us, she always followed the table rule which I taught her when she was very young; You must not eat on plates. I read somewhere that parent parrots stop their chicks' unacceptable behaviours by nudging them gently on the chest. I used this technique, and it was very successful. She immediately understood and never forgot it. I wish I could have used this for other important purposes. Because it became her golden rule, so I suspect that parents teach their chicks what should be avoided, in other words, what are dangerous,  in the wild in this fashion. I would love to know more about this.

It was obvious to us by the time Lala became adolescent that she should have been kept in her cage for at least a couple of hours everyday although I was usually at home. All my other birds have limited flying time. Because she refused to defecate in the cage as well as looking so distressed in it - biting bars and digging at the bottom of the cage -, I allowed her to be outside most of the time. She must have taken it for granted. Looking back, I now believe that all pet birds need cage training and stick training unless you will never go away, for even one day. Even if you decided to stay home for your birds for the rest of your life, you might have to stay in a hospital, or you might die unexpectedly. Then birds have to suffer from not only the loss of you, but also a cage life which they have never experienced. Besides, It isn't easy to find a birdsitter who willingly supervise the birds who have to stay outside the cages all of the time.

We also regret that we didn't get her a companion who we the room in a different cage, at earlier stage. Having kept two Kakarikis successfully, we thought that introducing a friend to her would be best for her mental welfare, especially mental health. Because of the great differences in behaviour - Lala being slow and a canopy bird, Kakariki boys being fast, hyperactive ground foraging birds, she didn't get along with our Kakariki boys. The difficulty in finding another bird was caused by my preference to get a parrot from a different genus. After some research, I thought that a Timenh Grey would be an excellent choice. We just couldn't find any breeders in our area. Consequently, Lala became very clingy to humans, and she was very unhappy to be left in the same room as the Kakarikis, when we went out.
 

Nesting behaviour She also started chewing the corners of furniture, wallpaper, cardboard, wooden pegs, fabric, branches and toys in earnest, once she became adolescent. She especially enjoyed shredding baskets. I hung a small basket in the Day cage. She happily sat there to chew it until it had disintegrated. Once she fell down with it when she chewed through the handle. A big willow basket was also hung on the balustrade. It was uppermost on my list to supply her with chewing baskets to make her happy as well as to protect our furniture.

She showed what we called 'ducking' behaviour in Mike's palm; wings were apart from the body and dropped, the beak was repeatedly opened and closed, and she circled around. Mike thought that this was 'hen' behaviour. She only did this on his palm.

She was very popular among our guests. We instructed them how to handle her beforehand. After a short introduction, she flew to their shoulders and happily stayed there. In fact, she didn't leave them alone until they left. We always encouraged her to be with strangers. We passed her around among the guests in the manner Sally Blanchard suggested. She seemed to have only good experiences with them, and she became more and more friendly to them.

In early spring of 2000, we planted a crab apple tree in the corner of our garden roughly in the direction that she flew away and disappeared. We only hope that one day the tree will bear lots of fruit which will meet not only the wild birds' voracious appetites but also heal the hunger of any escaped captive birds that might pass by.