Helpful Hollie

Tay: Help sometimes comes in the strangest ways but it does come! Boy do we have a story to tell...

About a month ago I set Aiden down with a bucket of moon sand in a disposable foil tray at the kitchen table to keep him occupied while I rounded up all the laundry. (Big mistake - moon sand has now been banned until I forget about this incident or he's 14, whichever comes first.) As soon as I left the room, Aiden began one of his compulsive throwing fits (hence the need for a therapist). He was actually trying to pelt Hollie where she was perched in her hanging cage, he later told me, but that didn't explain how orange sand dusted every inch of the kitchen & living room from the stovetop to the couch and beyond. Hollie did, however, have chunks of orange moon sand that had made it through the bars of her cage and she herself was dusted in quite a bit of it. All of this in a mere 30 seconds. (Let me interject I have been reading the Harry Potter books and I feel a kinship and deep understanding towards Mrs. Weasley...I have my own real life Fred & George rolled into one!) I was so beyond frustrated that I actually left the moon sand mess and loaded up Aiden as fast as I could into the car and kept him out of the house for the entire rest of the day. Brian was a total sweetheart and vacuumed it all up for me that night seeing how I was frustrated beyond words. Poor Hollie had to clean herself.

The next day I am again doing something necessary to the running of the household when I hear Hollie begin shrieking at the top of her little lungs. I bolt into the kitchen to find Aiden with the refrigerator door open, ketchup bottle in his hand, pouring a mountain on his plate for who knows what mess-making reason. He's looking at me and glancing at her as if he just had someone tattle on him. Hollie is quiet again as I clean up the mess and send Aiden off to play.

Later that same afternoon I hear Hollie again. Aiden has walked into the living room carrying a toy golf club (which he often would hit her cage with) and seems to be eyeing the place for something to whack around and destroy. Club is confiscated and put away. High, high away.

That evening Aiden has gotten a hold of something else (the details escape me - crackers maybe) but was making a smashed & scattered mess of it on the table while my back is turned cooking dinner. Hollie is squaking & flapping like it's a 4-alarm fire. She stops instantly the moment I intervene to clean up the mess. Then it hits me - something I had read a while ago comes to mind: Parakeets are extremely intelligent little birds with enormous capacity to learn.

Hollie had so severely disliked being pelted with sand in her cage and, I assume, was so thoroughly unhappy with having to preen the stuff out of her own feathers that she had learned when Aiden was making a mess she had better start calling for me or she was going to get pelted until she was dirty all over again. She had put herself to work as my own little Aiden alarm, acting as a second set of spying eyes over everything he was doing and alerting me at the first sign of trouble! Since then she's proven accurate, sounding a specific squak when Aiden is getting in to something that brings me running. (See, I can be trained, too!) That little bird has been a great addition to the family, if for no other reason than I needed exactly that kind of help. :)