African Grey Parrot Articles

The Grey Encounter

In October 1999, me and my brother waited solemnly outside of the school - we were quite cold but still quite wrapped up to an extent of not managing to bear any skin to the cold air, after seeing several cars leave the school parking lot - we saw none that came in. After mutterings of “hurry up” we catched a glimpse of my father’s car and then saw him coming into the parking lot - we managed to catch a glimpse, also, of my father’s friend who was placed in the front seat.

We ran towards the car, opened the door and climbed in and immediately my dad turned around to us and placed his finger on his lips. We all peeked in to the lap of his friends where a box lay - and in that box was a beautiful, grey bird. My brother instantly made to touch it but my father stopped him as he said that it was only a baby and he didn’t want him to scare it. On the way back home - we found out that this was ours, this African grey parrot was now ours for life.

When we came back home, my dad placed the box on the table and told us to go upstairs and get changed - we did so within five minutes - we were that excited. After we hurriedly ran downstairs we went towards the box, sat on the table and were about to stroke the parrot when we saw that it wasn’t there. Then I heard my father talking to something in the living room - I noticed that in our excitement, we hadn’t bothered to check the living room, our minds were fixated on the parrot.

As we rushed towards the living room, we saw to our delight the parrot and a shiny new cage that had taken it’s place in one of the corners of the living room - it was quiet and shy and my father had it on his hand talking to it and stroke it. We stood there quietly for a few minutes or so when we watched in amazement as it looked and moved its head and began to “bite” his finger (more or so, licking his finger). We were then told to move out the way, by my father’s friend when we placed the parrot on his finger and my father began to feed it with some parrot baby food. Me and my brother were fabulously enticed at this moment - it was like a phenomenon to us - to watch this parrot gobble down the food (in such a funny manner we noted) and want more and more. It reminded us of ourselves, to be quite frank.

On that night, we all decided on the name ‘Oscar’ it was very ‘parrot-ish’ my older sister had said but my mother was not so sure on it. Especially, as she replied, as we do not know if this is a male or a female.

When we were getting ready for bed, I walked towards my dad who was sat on a chair looking into his jacket. I took a peek and saw that Oscar was in there, looking quite sleepy but still determined to stay up in this man’s jacket. It was then that I placed a few large Lego blocks on the floor and placed my fingers up to it’s feet - Oscar first bit it - not too hard but I suppose, just to see if this foreigner wasn’t a predator. My dad lifted her out and on to my arm and after a few giggling I let her down onto the floor and let her venture to the Lego blocks. She went straight to the yellow and attempted to eat it - after failed attempts she went towards the red and then the blue, then, she went back to the yellow block and tried to push the yellow one towards my father - when she passed me she left the yellow block and walked towards me.

After that experience, I went back to my mother to tell her all about it - only to have a “I don’t like the name Oscar.” said to me, together - we decided on one that she had read about.

In the morning, we greeted our new parrot with the name: Lucky.

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