Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (20 page)

“
I was minding my own
business, chewing the curtains and mom told me to stop it. 
"How many times do I have to tell you that?!" she asked. I told her
"476.  And you're only at 92 so you have a long way to go but
don't hurry on my account." ”

“
Instead of paying attention
when moms are trying to teach us a trick or new words or something,
why not just ignore her and go play with some toys.  You won't
learn anything, but you might not have learned anything
anyway.  That's my point.”

“
Mom said I’m very wise for
my years. She says I’m only 8 but I argued and said I was older
than that. She said the only way to prove it to me is to cut me in
half and count the rings. I said, “WHAAAT?” Then I would be zero
years old! I think I’ll keep the 8.”

“
Mom's teaching me how to
count.  She holds up the little bowl of pine nuts and as I eat
each one, she counts 1-2-3-4-5 ... When she asks me before hand,
how many would I like, I say 2 or 4.  She asked my why I never
say 1 or 3 and I said, "Cuz 1 & 3 are weird."  She said,
"You mean 1 & 3 are 'odd' numbers."  I said "Same thing
stupid."  Besides, 2 & 4 make more snacks than 1 &
3.”

“
Good bird.  Bad
bird.  Good bird.  Bad bird.  Do you think I really
care?  If being a bad bird means I get to chew up your
eyeglasses, which do you think I really care about?  Besides,
once I hand them back to you, you'll tell me 'Good bird'.  So
it all works out in the end.”

“
Mom makes me toys, I keep
taking them apart, mom keeps putting them back together. That's
teamwork. And it's great enrichment for moms so they don't get
bored and cranky.”

“
"Everybody who is incapable
of learning has taken to teaching."  That speaks volumes to
me.  If that's the case, mom is the best teacher in the
world!”

“
As most of you know, my
cousin is Murray the Magician (as seen on America's Got
Talent).  I'm going to get him to teach me how to saw a man in
half.  It's my kind of thing eh?  But he probably won't
let me practice on a real live man - he'll probably start
me on a little boy.”

“
Mom took me on a snack
safari this morning. She hides my little bowl of pine nuts and
challenges me to find them. I sit on her hand and tell her where to
go by leaning in different directions. It was tough this morning
but I finally found them in the fridge and yelled "THERE'S the
snacks!" My reward is getting... to eat as many as I want. My
belly's gonna burst!”

We haven’t spend a lot of time training
Pickles, other than teaching him good behavior but there have been
a few things along the way.

In my last book, I explained how we
potty-trained Pickles and this came in handy. When he’s on his
playstand or cage, he doesn’t always go to designated pooping areas
but that’s not what’s important to us. When he’s with us, he tells
us he has to poop so we don’t get pooped on and neither does the
furniture. He poops on demand before being asked to step up so we
always know he won’t have to poop right away.

There was the one time though, when I asked
him to poop before I had him step up, that he said “YOU poop” and
we had a bit of an argument. I told him he wasn’t stepping up until
he pooped and he said “NO”. I figured he didn’t need to poop, maybe
he’d already gone, and so I got him to step up.

Half way through our walk around the house,
he started shaking his butt and shouting “No, no, no, no, no!” I
started waving my hand in the air, the hand he was perched on, to
distract him and when my hand came too close to the chains on a
hanging lamp, he took the opportunity to latch on to them and
refused to let go.

These chains loop between two hanging lamps
in the bedroom and just a couple of inches from the wall. The
minute Pickles was upright on them, he shot a nice sloppy poop –
straight on to the wall. “Gotta poop!” he said. “Kinda late,
wouldn’t ya say Pickles? Look what you’ve done!” I said as I
watched his big dump slithering down the wall.

I went to get a Kleenex to wipe it up but by
the time I returned, Neeka had almost finished the job and Pickles
was hanging his head watching the clean-up saying “Good BOY! Wanna
cookie?” Neeka looked up for his reward but puke was almost what he
got for his efforts because I was standing there gagging. This had
been an exceptionally large bundle of slimy bird poop and my
stomach was churning. I cleaned up the rest of the poop on the wall
but it left a clean streak on a somewhat dirty wall so I ended up
washing the whole damn thing. Oh well, it was scheduled for
painting the next week anyway.

We train Pickles to do little things, like
beaking the last book I wrote as Pickles’ signature when people buy
the book direct from me. This was something people started
requesting on Face Book and at first I had to delay shipping until
I could get him to do it. Then, sometimes he’d refuse but even
worse, he would get mad and grab the book with both his talon and
his beak and refuse to let go. He’s ruined a few books by grabbing
the cover and puncturing it.

Neil and I made a plan. One of us would hold
the book up to him and the other held his bowl of pine nuts, just
out of reach. “Beak the book for a snack” we’d tell him and the
minute he grabbed the signature page with his beak, the bowl of
snacks was presented to him, which made him let go. Now he wants to
beak any kind of book we have in our hands and is disappointed if
it’s not ‘his’ book and beakable.

We may not train him to do tricks or identify
items or count to 10 but every day there is some sort of training
in progress. The training never stops when it comes to his behavior
as life is always changing and new situations tend to crop up
daily.

We had to train Pickles to stay aloft when we
had the flyshop as it was dangerous to have him walking around when
we had customers. We’ve kind of slacked off with that in recent
months because now it’s not so urgent that he stays off the floor,
and it’s cute to watch. But back then, it was crucial and we had to
stop Pickles as he was climbing down from his perches at every
opportunity.

We were at a loss with training him so I
signed up with PBAS (Parrot Behavior Analysis Solutions) for some
much needed help on PR (Positive Reinforcement). I highly recommend
PBAS for anyone experiencing behavioral problems with their birds.
Just do a Google search on “PBAS, parrots” and you’ll find a Yahoo
Group page to sign up for on-line help.

I’m going to copy/paste some information
about Dr. Susan Friedman and her behavior classes (with her
permission, of course) …

[Beginning of quotes] “Dr. Susan Friedman is
a psychology professor at Utah State University who has pioneered
the application of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to captive and
companion animals. ABA, with its roots in human learning, offers a
scientifically sound teaching technology and ethical standard that
can improve the lives of all learners. Students from 22 different
countries have participated in Susan's online courses,
Living and Learning with Animals for Professionals
and
Living and Learning with Parrots for
Caregivers
. She has written chapters on learning and
behavior for three veterinary texts (
Behavior of
Exotic Pets
,
Clinical Avian
Medicine
, and
Manual of Parrot
Behavior
), and is a frequent contributor to popular
magazines. Her articles appear around the world in ten languages.
Susan has presented seminars for a wide variety of professional
organizations around the world such as the Association of Avian
Veterinarians, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria,
Moorpark College Exotic Animal Training and Management program, and
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She has been nominated for the
Media Award given by the International Association of Behavior
Analysis for her efforts to disseminate to pet owners,
veterinarians, animal trainers and zookeepers the essential tools
they need to empower and enrich the lives of the animals in their
care.

About the course: Our goal is to provide a
practicum to Susan Friedman’s LLP students and anyone else who is
interested in improving their Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)
skills to prevent and solve behavior problems with their companion
parrots.

Our emphasis is identifying the observable
functional relations between behavior and the environment, and
positive-first teaching solutions.

There are only two steadfast rules:

To change the behavior of your parrot you
must change your behavior first;

Positive-first teaching solutions are applied
to each other as well as our birds.

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions. We
are a work in process. Mistakes are our best teaching-learning
opportunities. Make several every day.

The three fundamental tenets of the
scientific analysis of behavior are as follows:

Behavior has function.

Future behavior is related to past
consequences.

Thoughtful antecedent arrangement of the
environment enables us to facilitate and maintain successful
behaviors.

The ABC’s of
Behavior

S.G. Friedman, Ph.D., Utah State
University

Published in Original Flying Machine, Issue
9: Nov-Dec, 2001.

Originally Presented at the Grey Poopon
Challenge Conference, Dec. 1000

Background

I once had a psychology professor who started
every class shaking his head chanting, “Behavior is nothing if not
complex.” Truer words were never spoken, and when it comes to the
complex behavior of our companion parrots, we definitely have our
hands full. With the potential for feather plucking, picking,
shredding, and clipping … incessant screaming, screeching, calling
and shrieking … not to mention biting, nipping, gnawing and clawing
– I’m never quite sure who to turn to for help, Dr. Kinner or Dr.
Seuss! Reducing problem behaviors seems especially complicated. I
have this image in mind of the desk toy with silver balls hanging
from strings attached to a wooden frame. The moment you pull back
one of the balls and release it, the others are set in motion and
continue clicking against one another for a long time before they
finally come to rest. Like this toy, behavior sets in motion a
cascade of perpetual interactions so that analyzing any one
behavior in isolation is essentially meaningless. Behavior is part
of an endless reciprocal interaction among an individual’s
genetics, behavioral and the environmental context in which the
behavior is performed.

In the face of such complexity, no wonder we
all have moments where we feel overwhelmed and empty-handed when
working with our parrots. To improve our ability to understand and
influence our parrots’ behavior, we need a systematic approach
which provides an organized framework and simplifies the seeming
complexity that threatens to obscure our view.

As Simple as ABC

One such approach to understanding specific
behaviors is known as ABC analysis. The letters stand for the three
elements of a simplified behavioral “equation” which includes the
antecedent
,
behavior
, and
consequences
.
With this strategy, we seed to identify through careful observation
the events and conditions that occur before the target behavior –
antecedent
, as well as identifying the
results that follow the
behavior
–
consequences
. This simple analysis, when
paired with keen observation skills and creative problem-solving,
will help us clarify the way in which the basic components of
behavior are interrelated. It is this clarity that leads us to
important insights and teaching strategies.

How To

There are six steps to analyzing the ABC’s:
(1) describe the target behavior in clear, observable terms; (2)
describe the antecedent events that occur and conditions that exist
immediately before the behavior happens; (3) describe the
consequences that immediately follow the behavior; (4) examine the
antecedents, the behavior and the consequence in sequence; (5)
devise new antecedents and/or consequences to teach new behaviors
or change existing ones; (6) evaluate the outcome.

Let’s look at one example: Veda, my otherwise
charming Alexandrine Parakeet, Psittacula eupatria, bites fast and
forcefully when I ask her to step onto my hand from inside her
cage. Seeing the problem in isolation and decked-out in its full
complexity, we might hypothesize that she is aggressive,
territorial, hormonal, defensive, or dominating. Alternatively, she
could be recalcitrant, stubborn, uncooperative or simply a stinker
who is also spoiled rotten! Any one, or all, of these hypotheses
might be accurate, but in terms of problem-solving, they serve only
to label the behavior, not solve it. And, since they do not
describe observable behaviors per se, one can never really be sure
about the accuracy of the label.

The ABC Analysis

What follows is my analysis of Veda’s biting
behavior using the ABC approach:

First, the background and setting: When asked
to step onto my hand from inside her cage, Veda often, but not
always, bites me! She does not bite under any other circumstance or
in any other situation. She does it any time of the day and with
all her family members. However, once out of her cage, Veda steps
up and down without hesitation, from all locations, including the
top of her cage. For three or four hours each day, Veda plays
happily on her tree perch in the family room, enjoys cuddles, and
generally relaxes by preening, playing with toys and nibbling. She
is by all other measures an outstanding companion bird.