life with cupid
A typical day with Cupid is really a lot of fun, as she is a good companion and has a great sense of humor. She waits for me to get up in the morning, and rarely wakes me up unless I really sleep in, but even then, she is usually pretty good about not being my alarm clock. But, as soon as she hears me, she's in her room beeping and calling out. She's learned the microwave beep very well, and she learned early on to associate it with breakfast. Once I have her breakfast ready, she gets locked in her cage to eat. She has always been so interested in everything else around her that eating is only something she will do with no other distractions. A typical meal for her will consist of birdie bread, cooked beans/grains/veggie mix, sprouts, or mixed vegetables. Good veggies for your Grey include sweet potato, winter squash, carrots, and peas. Her favorite kind of pellet is Harrisons. For treats, she gets almonds, banana chips, or Nutriberries.
And, yes, I have been known to taste her food! (As some of The Grey Connection people already know!)
Cupid loves to get a bath. Greys enjoy bathing many different ways, but she is mostly used to the spray bottle method. After her bath, she will sit on top of her cage, and talk and carry on for almost an hour!
Speaking of speech, she has learned quite a few things since coming to live with me. She turned one year old on March 27, 2000 and shortly after, a dam seemed to break. I think their brains are like tape recorders, and eventually they learn to repeat what they've heard. I haven't counted all the words she knows, but she knows quite a few. She will learn a new word, and words she learned previously will not be said as much anymore. There are quite a few things she says now but many she used to say that I haven't heard in quite some time. Please check back to this site as one day I might have some .wav files here. Among her current favorites are "Hi Poopy", "Here we go!", "You're grumpy", "What you doing", and "Are you?" She knows the microwave beep, raspberry noises, wolf whistling, meowing, and my sneezes.
Cupid is very playful and affectionate. One of her favorite activities is beating up her toys. I have many different toys that I rotate through her cage on a regular basis but there are a couple that always stay in there because she misses them if I take them out. There is one toy that she will hang from, and she will get so excited that she will scream! The more fun she is having, the louder she gets. She usually has one or two good, hard playing episodes per day when she really screams at it. She also loves to be on me. If it were possible, she would be on me every moment of every day. She will climb from my shoulders to my head via my hair, and back down again, over and over as if I were a tree. She will stop at my shoulder, give me a kiss, solicit head scratches, then climb back down. Usually evenings are when she is the most cuddly and affectionate. She will often preen my hair and face, but I have to be careful because she will pluck my eyebrows! She will give me tons of kisses, cooing softly at me. When she is really relaxed, I can actually pick her right up in the palms of my hands, with her feet dangling in the air.
At night when she is tired and ready to settle in, she softly grinds her beak. This is an activity parrots do to condition their beaks for the next day's activities. She will fluff all up and be on one foot, and tuck her head around on her back. If she isn't quite ready for bed, she will let out this pathetic "BEEEEEP!" as if to say "Can't I stay up five minutes longer?"
Overall, Cupid is an excellent companion. She is a lot of work but she is a lot of fun too, and I wouldn't give her up for anything.
