24 April 1999: Sweetie Boy Blake

This is going to be pure pet blather. You've been warned.

I love my little guy. I believe I've already made that clear. Right now on a chillly Saturday afternoon he stands on the chair between my legs (I'm in my usual pose: left knee up, left foot on chair, right leg bent and right foot under left butt) and preens and dozes. The length of his body is not quite pressed against my leg, and if I moved he would snap at me for disturbing his royal rest. I'm not sure what foot he's on and I can't see under him to check--no, wait, by leaning way left and looking in the Graduate gap between my thigh and shin, I see that's he's on his right foot, because the longer toe is on the outside.

It's really tempting to tickle a finger into his belly feathers to feel the other foot clenched in the plumage, but of course as soon as he's disturbed, the other foot comes down so he can better attack the offending party. So he's up on his right foot and has tucked his beak into his left wing, just below where the wing joins the body. This pose stretches his neck to the point that all the feathers on his nape and along his hackles stand up for maximum fluffiness and warmth.

The problem with tucking is that he can't yawn from the tuck. You really haven't lived until you've exchanged yawns with your pet. As a cockatiel gets sleepier and sleepier, he yawns, throwing his head forward and opening his mouth quite staggeringly wide (since both halves of the mandible can move, instead of only the lower jaw like humans and dogs) and thrusting out his tongue and chasing it back into his mouth. After sufficent yawning, he draws his head into his torso (remarkably bendy necks they have) and commences chewing his beak, which sounds like grinding teeth and is a grooming thing to ready the beak for the next days's prospecting. Eventually, the beak is ready and the bird tucks himself, all cozy and warm.

Seldom is an afternoon nap a solid hour of nap. Blake frequently wakes from his doze to preen or squeak, either of which he can do from one foot, but whenever he does wake I pick him up to freshen him up. Every 20 minutes or so when he's awake, or whenever he wakes up, he needs to Go. I have known a cockatiel who pooped himself, but neither of ours has learned that handy (for us) trick, which requires flight anyway.

Blake doesn't fly, much. Sometimes he drops so many flight feathers at once that enough grow in together that he can fly for a while, but we eventually clip his primaries. One day I would like to build him an aviary with plenty of space to fly and safe plants and endless toys, but even then I would worry about his being fully fledged. Since I am holding a bird in captivity and have made it over that moral hurdle, I have accepted the responsibility to keep him safe, and keeping him safe means keeping him clipped.

When he preens, he tickles my skin with the edges of the feathers skimming over it. His preening seems a necessary frustration to him and he attacks his feathers with vigor, as if thinking that if he can do it right this one last time, eventually he won't have to bother ever again. Except with his tail feathers. He likes those. He digs into the base of his tail and tugs down the rachis with his beak, all the way down to the tip, by which point he's pulled himself into a circle and, like a dog chasing its tail, has stepped around in a full circle.

I guess he feels fully rested now. He's on the desk, shredding paper and throwing pens on the floor and peering behind the monitor, behind the speaker. You can never tell what might be back there.

And of course there's his crest. Relaxed, the crest rests at about half-staff. When he's scared (like when we've sneezed or the phone has rung) or interested, the crest comes up, straight up from behind his cere (the spot between his nostrils over his beak) , an inch and a half of bright yellow cockatiel flag, the ver' tips of the four longest feathers curving even more forward. When he's angry, he slicks the crest back against his skull: his don't fuck with me look. He has a very full crest, with four longest feathers instead of Percy's two. When Percy dropped one crest feather, he looked scalped; with twice as many, Blake has some leeway before we tell him he need Minoxidil.

When he was a baby,before his crest grew out, he looked like an eaglet, with a square profile like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. If we massage his cranium just right, we can still achieve that look. Another thing we like to do is push the longer feathers on the top of his skull down over his eyes, like bangs.

And oh, his eyes. Such sweet little beady brown eyes. We'd had Percy for months before realizing that when the light strikes a cockatiel's eye just right, you can see the brown iris surrounding the even beadier black pupil. And his eyelashes! Darling little eyelashes, each single black hair growing out of a wee yellow feathered base. When he closes his eyes, the lower lid comes up before the upper comes down. His eyelids are not at all cute. They're just grey and elephantine, but they're not as gross as a dog's inner eyelid. He is capable of opening only one eye, which is a neat trick so that when he's got his beak in a wing, he can open one eye without getting the other one full of feathers.

His ears are his least endearing feature, but at least he has the sense to grow little orange ear feathers over them. They look like a snake's ears or a turtle's, just gaping holes in the skull if you're determined to part the ear patch plumage to see them. During Blake's stupider moods, you can indeed see through to the other side.

His ears are reptilian, his feathers are modified scales, but his feet--that's where his dinosaur ancestry is most readily apparent. They're scaly and look as much like Tyrannosaurus Rex claw as anything else. All parrots have zygodactyl feet, two front and two back toes. The inside back toe used to be a front inside toe, and hasn't evolved to point back yet. If the three toes of the right foot are at eleven, one, and five o'clock, the inside toe is not at seven but at about eight-thirty.

Oh, and the ankles. Or knees. We're not sure. There's a flat spot at the back of leg where it makes the dogleg (excuse me) turn past the drumstick to the thigh, very soft and the least scaly part of the leg. When he's mesmerized with head petting, you can massage the ankle, not otherwise. Blake's thighs are yet another charming part, because they're covered by bloomers, fluffly little trouser feathers.

And there's his gait, and the way you can see the cogs turning as he tries to figure out how to jump from the desk to the bookcase (two months and he hasn't figured it out yet, nor stopped trying), and how he snuggles under your chin when you read (and sometimes gets his crest up your nose), and how vilely wet his sneezes are, and how he likes to sing into a cupped hand, and how he paces his perch, lifting a foot for step-up at every end, begging to be picked up and brought out, and how when he thinks he's never going to be loved again ever in life, he sings/whines to a foot held out flexed in front of him, and how he'll insert himself under a hand for a full-body scoop and drop his head to facilitate petting his head and neck and jowls, and how he repels up and down your body, and how much brushing teeth and shaving intrigue him, and how what a good spider alarm he is--Blake's endlessly fascinating.

Blake's our sweetie boy Blake, our scoopy boy, our buddy. Percy was my Swee' Pea, and now Blake is my swee'bee. How I love him.