Nyassa's Journal

28-Mar-1999

Nyassa's first day

I decided to sleep on the couch to keep an eye on him that first night. He slept through the night. I opened the cage cover after I turned out all the lights the night before, and as soon as I opened my eyes and moved my head, I was greeted with a "whoop!"

The second day was frightening. I had errands to run for a few hours in the afternoon, including picking up some Kwik Stop of my own. Bad of me to forget to get that before I brought him home. I also picked up some smaller toys, another "comfy perch" and another stainless steel bowl for his cage. I need to buy another set of them in fact, ideally several sets.

While I was gone, he was digging in the corners of the cage, which was leaving a small wound just above his beak. He started doing that at the breeders, and he's not yet broken of it. He puts his head against the cage corner and digs with his feet at the towels lining his cage bottom.

The frightening part came when I let him out of the cage. He doesn't understand glass. Not even a little. He would go up to my deck door and tap his beak against the glass. He did this for about 30 minutes, making confused sounding cheeps all the while. He then backed up about four bird-lengths, jumped, and flew into the glass. I rushed over, and he was tapping his beak again.

Later, he leaped from my hand without any warning, and banged a wing on the glass table I have in the living room. I just about died again. He didn't seem to notice, and the wing was held as usual, and when I touched it he didn't seem upset.

Finally, I set him on the table. He started making lots of distressed bird sounds. I put a towel under him, and he was ok with that. He'd walk up to the edge of the towel, look down, and turn around. As I said, he doesn't understand glass yet.

He also didn't eat all that well during the day. He seemed to only nibble on things, usually tossing the things he didn't like out. I know he hates banannas, for instance, since he tossed one piece at the floor, then another, and finally a third he flung enough to stick it to the TV screen a dozen feet away. [Read below to see how wrong I was about what he was used to eating!]

He didn't even touch his pellet food. He also didn't touch anything "hard" or even "firm." He ate grapes with little to no grace, apples were ok, cooked pasta was fine, but carrot chunks and brocoli and other firmer foods were dropped or ignored. He got much better holding food with one foot the second day, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Finally it was bedtime. It was dark outside for several hours before I put him in his cage. He most certainly did not like that. He cried with that little baby bird begging sound, he dug at the corners, and he climbed all over his cage, falling and flapping often. I peeked inside to make certain he was ok each time, but carefully so he didn't see me doing so.

Finally I covered his whole cage, and he calmed down. I still had to leave the lights off for an hour or so before he became quiet, and even after I turned them back on he would whistle at me. I whistled back, and he'd stay quiet. When I didn't whistle back, he'd start moving around again. It was pretty stressful for both of us.

As any new parent, I wanted to show him off. While he was out of his cage and standing still, I took a few pictures of him, of course. And of my little parakeet, Xeno. I think she was jealous (but not frightened) of Nyassa, so I played with her a while after Nyassa went to bed.

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