Here’s Kelly, a mealy Amazon parrot who adorned my mother’s apartment for several years. I recently received an old box of my stuff, which included these photos I had taken.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Better than a dang rat! Incredible how smart and full of personality parrot family birds are…
I love 'em! Parrots are the best pets, besides dogs that is.
We have one just like that at the petstore I work at. His name is Mr. Greenjeans and he used to be the greeter at a hotel in Hawaii, then they were sold and he wound up at another petshop, then that place closed so they gave him to the store I work at. He talks from about 8 am to 12 noon, then takes a nap, then wakes up around 2 and starts in again.
There’s also a scarlet macaw. Neither the Amazon nor the macaw are for sale.
There is a cockatoo who is for sale, and after this morning I really wish someone would buy him. I had to change the paper under his cage, and I had let him out of the cage because the other 2 birds were out and I felt sorry for him. He bit me on the arm. 
Luckily I was wearing 2 layers for warmth, so he didn’t draw blood. But I sure have a big bruise now, and I was about ready to wring his neck.
What a sweetie! He surely knows he’s special!
Robin
Awwww! Birds are so awesome! It makes me so sad to think that people kill and eat them.
Rats are more intelligent than parrots, at least I’d think so. Rats can be trained to learn their names, use a litter box, and if their little hands were big enough I’m sure they could play whistle as well.
Hi Charlene, where I’m living now, there’s a flock of 50 or so cockatoos that fly over in the afternoon. I love cockatoos, they are natures’ own jester - they get curious about things and often add a little joke. I saw one once hanging upside-down from the rope of a flagpole (the type that sticks out horizontally from a building) - he pecked through the rope and fell like a stone - taking flight just in time to avoid splatting on the pavemet - I could see that is was all planned and he enjoyed playing chicken with the ground. They often sneak-up and knock each other off their perch. And the bite! These birds have been known to strip a full grown pine tree down to a standing stick! They bully other birds, especially currawongs (currawongs raid the nests of other birds and eat their chicks) - I always know the cockies are coming by the warning shouts of the currawongs 
Cockatoos are very cute as pets - they talk and dance etc but they hate it - they become bitter and nasty and wreak as much havock as possible. A friend of mine once freed one to the wild flock - he imediately flew up into a tree and killed one of the wild birds.
Hope your arm is feeling a bit better, but watch out for that bird! He’s evil
Yuk. Rats!
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=36080&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=ratball
and 100 points to Weeks for sheer stamina!
Parrots are at least as intelligent as rats! My bird knows his name, goes potty and knows to get back to his perch to do so, and can imitate a smoke detector or incoming missile with incredible precision (at which point we say “Incoming!”). He also has all the humans in the household trained to do his bidding, warns me when the garbage truck, oil truck, UPS guy, or mailman shows up, tells me when he’s planning on getting a drink or snack, and also can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe! He insists on having his weekly “date” dinner with me and hubby, during which he gets to have his favorite crusty bread with obligate neck scratching with said crusty bread (nobody ever said he was normal). He has my daughter trained to scratch his head with a peanut every morning, prior to consenting to eat it. Just remember that he is related to T. rex, and everything will be fine. Parrots will kick your butt if they’re not respected, and you will lose!
P.S. My daughter’s gerbil seems to know her name…not sure if it’s with joy or trepidation!
Robin
Kelly did a lot of cute things.
Deeply absorbed, he would noodle around making imitative voice sounds that sounded like words but were just jibberish. This was amusing to listen to because he seemed really thoughtful as he was doing it, like he was figuring something out.
Sometimes he would get excited and make a lot of noise. After a period of noisemaking, he would say “Kelly, be quiet!” and then he would shut up.
There was a sort of repetitive crowing sound he would make. Eventually, we realized that he was ringing, after noticing that he would sometimes stop this repetitive crowing sound after saying, “Hello!” Then we noticed that he would do complete phone calls, starting with a sequence of rings, then “Hello!” and a period of talking sounds followed by “Goodbye!” And then he would shut up.
One evening, my mother and I were watching Fiddler on a Roof on her VCR. Kelly was on his perch at the other end of the apartment, which had an open floor plan, quite a distance away. He made no sounds at all during most of the movie. However, during the long, heartrending farewell scene, where the daughter is leaving her father to go off with a Bolshevik or some such person, a scene that went on and on, sort of like this sentence, after a long time into the scene, we heard Kelly across the apartment, softly and slowly say, “Bye … bye …”
Best wishes,
Jerry
Thanks Mitch. Zack (that’s his name) doesn’t like very many people. It scares me when customers stand face to face with him and try to scratch him, because I’m worried that he will put someone’s eye out. But management doesn’t seem to care. Want to guess how much they are charging for him??
$1300. Just for the bird, then there would be the cost of the cage and the food and the toys.
The Amazon parrot loves men but doesn’t want anything to do with women. He’s got one favorite male employee and when the employee is too busy to talk to Mr. Greenjeans, Mr. Greenjeans says “hello” about a million times trying to get his attention.
The macaw loves one female employee. When she makes the announcement at closing time telling customers that the store is closing, the macaw screams because she knows that her favorite person will be leaving soon. This macaw was sick a while back and they moved her cage into someplace where the bird could be kept warm - the employee lunchroom. So we had to eat lunch and take our breaks in the same room as a sick bird. I won’t eat anything from the big bags of snacks that are left out on the table now since I saw several people hold a bag of snacks open and let the macaw stick her head into the bag to select a treat.
I’m not overly fond of birds as pets. One of my aunts had a parakeet which flew around the house when I was very young, and that scared me, and then the Hitchcock movie The Birds finished the job. Now that I’m much older, I’m okay with someone else having birds, and I don’t really mind them being in the store, but I still wouldn’t have one myself.