Pickles The Parrot Returns: My Continued Adventures with a Bird Brain (5 page)

Don’t be afraid to experiment. As long as
there’s good, tasty ingredients in there, the breads should get
eaten.

Carrot/Pineapple Bread

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp cinnamon

2 eggs (with or without shell)

1 cup grated carrots

½ cup applesauce

1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

(or fresh pineapple)

½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

1 tsp. Vanilla extract

Mix dry ingredients. Mix the rest of the
ingredients in separate bowl then add them to the dry
ingredients.

Pour into lightly greased & floured loaf
pan – I use a little Canola – and bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60
minutes, or until edges start to brown.

Cranberry/Raspberry Bread

1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1 cup frozen cranberries

1/3 cup mashed ripe banana

1/3 cup plain yogurt

¼ cup shredded coconut

1 egg

¼ tsp salt

¼ cup dry tapioca

¼ c orange juice

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup cheerios

1 tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups potato flour

Beat egg. Add all ingredients except for
flour and mix. Add flour. Depending on the juice in the
raspberries, ripeness of bananas and consistency of yogurt, you may
need to add a bit more flour to a nice, doughy consistency.

Pour into lightly greased & floured cake
pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50 to 60 minutes, or until edges
start to brown.

Autumn Melody

The following is Pickles' favorite birdie
bread. It can only be made in the fall and most of the ingredients
are found in our yard. You can easily substitute items that are not
available to you but cotoneaster berries, mountain ash berries,
wild rose hips (or domestic) can usually be found Just about
anywhere - in the wild or in your neighbor's yards. Just make sure
pesticides haven't been used. And don't worry about picking out
every single small twig or leaf, otherwise it's very finicky work
and not necessary. Make sure to save the pumpkin seeds from the
fresh pumpkin - you will be adding them to the bread but save the
rest to feed to your bird over the next few days.

All the ingredients are beneficial to health,
and rose hips and mountain ash berries are rich in vitamin C.

This makes a fairly large batch, 9 X 11 pan,
and you want it to be almost of bread dough consistency. Depending
on the ingredients you substitute, you may need to add more water
or more flour for proper consistency.

1/2 cup chopped pumpkin (birdie bite
size)

1 cup steamed & mashed pumpkin

1/2 cup cotoneaster berries

1/2 cup rose hips

1 cup mountain ash berries

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (reserved from fresh
pumpkin)

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds & juice (
or 1 small)

4 cups whole-wheat flour

1 cup grape juice

1 1/2 cup water

(optional - cloves, if your bird likes them,
Pickles doesn't)

Mix the berries, seeds and chopped pumpkin
with the mashed pumpkin. Add flour, mix well. Add juice and water
and stir until doughy consistency. Place in 9 X 11 cake pan,
lightly greased with canola oil. Bake at 350 degrees for 60
minutes.

Pip PipCheerios

1/8 cup of cheerios

1/8 cup of grape nuts

1/8 cup of chex

1/8 cup of brown or cane sugar

1 cup of soy milk or juice

(substitute any of the cereal if you
like)

Extra cheerios for topping – 1 per cookie

1/4 cup of chopped almonds

¼ cup of pecans

¼ cup of pinenuts

(substitute any of the nuts if you like)

¼ cup peanut butter (or other nut butter)

¼ cup corn meal (or other flour)

1 tsp each of sesame seeds

1 tsp of canola oil

1 beaten egg

Mix all ingredients together.  At this
point the mixture should be a little wet so you want to leave it
for about 10 minutes for the Cheerios to soak. After that, it
should be almost crumbly in texture.  If too wet, add more
cornflour or other flour.

Drop by teaspoon onto baking sheet and push
one whole dry cheerio into the centre of each cookie.

Bake at 350 for 7 to 10 minutes, or until
starting to brown on edges.  Should make about 50 cookies.

Sweet Potato Burrito

Bake or microwave one sweet potato – poke
holes in it first. Peel the potato after it is cooked, or scoop out
the flesh. Mash the potato with just enough fresh juice to make a
paste.

Use a rolling pin to flatten some 12-grain
slice of bread (or whole wheat, or whatever you like to use) then
spread the potato paste on the bread.

Cut the bread slices into strips anywhere
from 1 to 2 inches wide. Roll the strips up tightly and voila!

“
I decided I wanted a grass
hut but then I thought - no, because my dog would eat it to keep
from puking.  So I decided a mud hut would be
better.”

“
I dreamed that I ran up and
kicked my little dog, Neeka, in the butt and my foot got stuck and
he dragged me round and round the yard.  I was scared but when
I woke up, I realized how stupid my dream was cuz I'd never kick my
dog in the butt.  I'd bite him.”

“
Neeka the dog was sneezin'
his nose.  He looked like some kinda cartoon dog, he's so
funny.  He couldn't stop so I got right down on the bottom of
my playstand for a front row seat.  I was laughing and
laughing until all the sneezing and laughing got mom's attention
and she came in the room.  That's when the fun
ended.”

“
Neeka thinks food grows out
of the kitchen tiles when mom or dad is cooking.  He sits
there staring at the floor, just waiting for something to pop
up.  Dumb dog.  Everybody knows food grows out of
bowls.”

“
Okay mom, so you don't like
it when I toss your pork chop on the carpet.  The dog and
I don't mind eating off the floor, why should you?”

“
I called my dog,
Neeka, over & asked him if he wanted to go for a
walk.  He just looked at me, being the chump he is, so I
climbed down from the cage and walked out of the room saying "Let's
go.  Let's go for a walk."  But when I turned around he
was still sitting there.  I came back and said "Doncha wanna
go for a walk?" but he didn't answer.  Then I
remembered.  He doesn't understand going for a walk cuz before
he came to live with us, mom always said that to me and she didn't
want him to learn it otherwise every time she would ask me to go
for a walk around the house, he would get excited and think he was
going outside.  So, I think we should come up with a term for
Neeka to understand going for a walk.  I suggested "Let's
go shove a stick up your nose! C'mon boy!  Let's go!" 
But I haven't noticed mom using that yet.”

“
If you were forced to eat
dog food, it wouldn't be so bad.  Not unless the dog had
leprosy or something.”

“
What about, instead of
mouse traps, we have dog traps?  Not to hurt them or anything,
but just to hold them down long enough to chew up their
toys.”

“
I'm going to get a Seeing
Eye Skunk.  A Seeing Eye Dog would be okay but people would
really get out of the way for a Seeing Eye Skunk.”

“
I tell mom or dad to
'tell me a story' and when they do, they put their lips up to my
ears and talk. I go into a daze from the vibrations and warmth
of their breath. I like the vibrations on my beak too so sometimes
I tell them 'talk to the beak'. My little dog Neeka is like that
too, he likes his ear talked to. Not by me though.”

Neeka and Pickles are quite the characters
together. While they don’t interact physically, they are very
attuned to each other. It’s really quite comical watching both dog
and bird when something scares one or the other. They both react to
each other’s frights and they’re both pretty darn sure that, even
though something didn’t initially scare one of them, the other must
know something that they don’t.

When Neeka was a little pup, I brought home a
new ball for him to play with – one of those colorful, smaller
sized beach balls – and the moment he saw it in my hand, he was
leaping like a little kangaroo in his excitement to get at it. I
wasn’t thinking of the crazy colors on the ball as I threw it from
the kitchen doorway and into the livingroom. Neeka, in his frenzy
to go after it, made about half a dozen attempts to pursue it from
the kitchen tile, looking all the while like a cartoon dog running
a mile a minute in the same spot. The only thing missing was the
music of the beating tin drum in the background. He finally managed
to bolt after it but the scuffling, bolting and sudden appearance
of a large kaleidoscopic colored sphere appearing out of nowhere
almost gave Pickles a coronary.

As Neeka ran after the ball, Pickles came
unhinged and flew screaming around the room causing Neeka to do an
about-face and run, terrorized, out of the room. I’m killing myself
laughing about it as I type this. I can’t help it; I’m the type of
person who laughs at serious accidents. I don’t mean to, it’s just
a knee-jerk reaction for me.

I once watched a good friend get hit by a car
and I barely had the strength to help her off the ground from
laughing so hard. Don’t get me wrong, somewhere in the back of my
head, I was horrified and extremely concerned about her but I could
also tell that she wasn’t dead or anything since she was moving and
the car hadn’t been going all that fast. She was furious with me at
first but my laughing was contagious and soon she was laughing
through her tears, right along with me. She did have a sore hip
where she was struck and a couple of bruises and scrapes but I
think the laughter got her through the pain briefly – I’d like to
think so anyway.

So, suddenly, here was a ball – the best toys
EVER – and Pickles had convinced Neeka that this particular ball
was sheer evil and it took some time before Neeka would trust it
again.

It works both ways. Pickles loves brooms but
one day Pickles was on his boings in the kitchen, Neeka was laying
on a mat chewing a rawhide and I walked into the room, broom in
hand. Pickles spotted it first, got all bright eyed and scampered
to get closer just as Neeka noticed it and jumped to his feet,
hackles up and barking frantically. This frightened Pickles but in
his mind, the broom had instantly become the scary thing in the
room. He ran like a tightrope walker across his ropes, toward Neeka
and away from the broom. The whole time I swept the room, Neeka
barked and Pickles squawked at the intruder. Pickles has since
gotten over it and likes the broom again but Neeka continues to
despise it.

I was taking Pickles for one of his daily
walks around the house, carrying him around on my hand, when I
walked through a sticky patch of the kitchen floor.  Neil and
I were having a few drinks the night before and my rum and pepsi
got spilled and obviously not wiped up good enough.  I was
wearing my flip flop slippers and one of them kind of stuck to the
tiles, making a loud ripping sound as I lifted my foot.  It
scared the bejeezus out of Pickles and between the rip sound and
Pickles' sudden flapping, it scared the bejeezus out of
Neeka.  And between the rip, the flap and the sudden scurrying
dog, it scared the bejeezus out of me!  I lost my balance,
tripped over the dog, Pickles fell off my hand and onto the dog and
the dog ran one way while Pickles flew the other and I was left
standing there, dogless and birdless with no idea where either of
them got to.  I went searching for Pickles thinking
Man, I really otta pick up a mop now and
then
.

I should insert a little background on Neeka
here. I mentioned some of this in my last book but I’ll do a quick
recap. We got Neeka when he was 8 weeks old and could easily fit in
the palm of my hand. He was neutered but it’s taken about 3 years
for him to figure that out, much to the chagrin of all his
defenseless stuffy toys. He’s a rust colored Min Pin (Miniature
Pinscher – no relation to the Doberman) with some black markings on
his face. He’s of sweet temperament, smart, obedient, aims to
please but timid around new people or dogs until he gets to know
them. He’s playful and is happy to amuse himself with the billions
of toys we’ve bought him over the years but given the choice, he’d
rather be glommed to me every minute of the day. He’s never been
destructive in the least and from day one we could leave him alone
in the house with no fear of him getting into anything. The only
thing he insists on destroying, are certain stuffy toys - he’s
obsessed with ripping the stuffing out of them and scattering it
all over the house.

Sheesh, I remember the old days of raising
dogs, when dogs were given a toy or two and other than that you
just threw a ball or stick for them now and then. They were
expected to behave and not get bored or get into things, to just
behave and be good. Poor things. Since having a parrot, learning
about behavior and positive reinforcement, I’ve learned to apply
all that to dogs.

I buy a lot of toys but I also come up with
ideas of my own for his amusement. It drives me crazy, especially
when watching TV, but he likes it when I put beads in a plastic pop
bottle for him to chase, chew on and shake like a dead rat. That
will amuse him indefinitely. I will also take a bottle, without the
lid, and put small pieces of cookies inside for Neeka to roll
around in hopes of something falling out. Narrower shaped bottles
are best for this, as they don’t fall out as easy when Neeka steps
on the bottleneck. He will roll it or bang it around and then spend
a minute checking every inch of ground for something that might
have fallen out, then it’s back to attacking the bottle. I save old
peanut butter jars – the smaller ones, because he’s so small – and
give them to him to lick whatever’s left. I save the jar to smear
more peanut butter whenever I want to give him a treat.