Vinny the Inventor

Vinny definitely watches too much tv. Please let me explain that.

Sometimes when we're doing chores around the house, or we're in the office upstairs for a little while and Vinny's too rambunctious for his own good, we leave him by himself in the big cage in the living room. He's totally fine there. Lots of toys to play with, a bit of snacky food (usually a tomato or just some pellets), fresh water, what does a young Eclectus want more?

Sometimes we leave the TV on. He'll start talking and will keep doing that for at least an hour. He loves loud noise, including but not limited to applause, explosions and thunderstorms. We usually let him watch anything like that, as long as it's PG. We don't want to turn him in to a cursing bird.

Last weekend, we had a moment like that, where we just wanted some rest. We let him be by himself downstairs. However, what we didn't realize, was that he was watching stuff he wasn't supposed to watch. When we came down later to get him, he was watching reruns of MacGyver. Sure, it's PG and of course he loves it. He was babbling a lot and we were wondering what he was saying. But of course that was futile, since the only few words he says that we can understand, is Coca Cola, Hello, Good Boy, Shower and Wockawocka.

Anyway, getting sidetracked here. The thing is ... we didn't realize how dangerous it was to let him watch MacGyver, until a few days ago. My girlfriend was working on her computer and Vinny was exploring the room. Nothing extraordinary. When I go to work in the morning, I usually throw a towel over my desk, otherwise I'll find the keys of my keyboard scattered all over the room, and Vinny also loves the rubber mouse wheel. So at some point she looks over, and sees Vinny experimenting with a few things. 

tools of the trade

On the towel, he had gathered a small coil of network cable, my World of Warcraft authenticator, and a pack of gum. Was he planning his escape? Does he have a secret plan to rule the world? Is he becoming a Prepper?

Either way, of course she had to laugh so hard and me as well, when I came home and she told me about this. It took a little while till we linked this to MacGyver. Of course there were no WoW-authenticators back in the days when MacGyver originallly was on TV, but that only shows how intelligent Vinny is. At least, he's coming up with his own inventions!

Or at least, that's what we like to think. 

basket with foot-toys

However, there's a truth to all of this. We do really believe that Vinny is trying to grasp the concept of tools. In the office, on a dedicated Vinny table, we have this basket with most of his 'foot-toys'. And on occasion, we do catch him trying to combine those toys into one big toy. An example of this is an old decommissioned creditcard he's putting into a little box. Of course, like for most inventors, it also comes with failure, and in those cases he usually just goes into tantrum mode for a few minutes, with him getting angry at the toys and throwing them out of the basket. 

Do you have any similar experiences with your Eclectus or other parrot? Feel free to share them in the comments! Would love to hear them.

Vinny goes social!

Vinny isn't very skilled at the computer. As you can see, he did have a go at it (especially the scroll-wheel of my mouse). Had to get a new one, but it was time for that anyway. My 'punishment' for not paying attention for a few seconds.

We'll go into what we sometimes call 'Vinny karma' later.

Anyway, the point of this is that my girlfriend and I see ourselves as Vinny's 'publicists'. We post on his behalf, so to speak. Why? Well, as we said in the welcome post, we think that the info we've gathered so far  might help people who just got a young parrot themselves (even though we hardly call ourselves experts). And hopefully it's a nice read at the same time.

At the moment, Vinny is working his way through a mini-pumpkin filled with more fruity goodies and looking at me with those big cute googly eyes, and I can see him thinking: "Hey you, keep concentrating on that blog! And why haven't you tweeted yet today? What the hell am I paying you for? Oh, and don't forget, I'll be asking for more food later and demand some attention. Just so you know! And I might poop on you or wipe my pumpkin-beak on your shirt".

Yes, we love him anyway.

We have our own social media channels like Twitter, Google+ and YouTube, so we figured it might be fun for Vinny to have his own ways of communicating with the world through the internet. For the last few weeks, we've been doing that in those various ways, but as of now, we're concentrating everything around the centerpiece of it all, and you're reading it right now.

So, since this blog is now the epicenter of Vinny's online presence, from here it's easy to find your way to his other social media channels.

Google+
YouTube
Twitter

Before writing this blog, from the moment that Vinny moved in with us, we kept a diary on a Dutch forum for parrot owners. Feel free to visit this one as well and read up. Don't forget to go to the other pages as well. Four pages so far.

Diary on Sennapapegaaien.nl
Diary on Sennapapegaaien.nl, with Google Translate

On this forum, you'll also find some baby pictures of Vinny. We'll post those snapshots on here as well, later on.

Take care, and see you in the next post!