Meanwhile, back at the rancher, K-bird continues to learn new things. She’s also gotten bigger. While some Senegals experience a period of fearfulness or nervousness as they get closer to their 2nd hatch day, self confidence has never been Kendi’s problem. She’s mastered two new skills. Well, to her they're skills. To wit: mastiff surfing and target acquisition....

Mastiff surfing is just what it sounds like. Yep. She’s riding the dog. She’s done this twice so far. She simply leaps from wherever she happens to be perched onto the passing dog. And Winston doesn’t mind, because he sees us with the bird clinging to our arm or shoulder, so he figures it’s a perfectly normal for Kendi to cling to him. And his fur and skin are so thick I don’t even think he can feel her talons. The danger, of course, is that she’ll miscalculate and the dog will step on her by accident, though he makes every effort not to harm her.

I blame The Hub for the target acquisition thing. He’s the one that got her hooked on “Dogfights” on the History Channel. It’s an astonishingly boring program in which great aerial battles of the past are re-created using computer modeling and the memories of thickening and aging men who seem blithely unaware that, in many cases, they almost started World War Three. But all that aerial footage, all that swooping and diving holds Kendi’s full attention, sometimes for the full hour that it’s on. What do you expect? She IS a bird. And she has a very minimal wing trim, too. Due to my being inexperienced at it, I’m reluctant to cut away too much new growth.

Still, I was slow to pick up what was going on when she’d hop from my shoulder to the back of the chair, flap her wings and hop back onto my shoulder chattering excitedly. It seemed as if at times her landings were a little harder – I’m now aware that she was probably coming in from further and further away. Until one day, as I was passing her perch, in whirr of wings – Yep, there she was, proudly sitting on my shoulder, right where she wanted to be. The danger of this is that she’ll miscalculate and I’LL step on her by accident. Especially since she only has about a 50% success rate and half of the time I have no idea where I am early in the morning.

Such things do not concern the K-bird though. She continues on, fearless as the Red Baron. Parrots have a surprisingly long attention span. It really is like having a two year old with wings. I asked The Hub if we could get a macaw and I could quit my job claiming to be home with “the children”. I think he thought I was kidding. Sigh.