Post by siobhan on Jan 19, 2016 13:54:54 GMT -5
There are many reasons that I'm happy to be living in my childhood home, which is paid for and therefore we have no one to answer to about what weird things we do to the place, but an important reason is that with all these birds, we have to do REALLY weird things.
Rocky 'Too took a notion to gnaw on the woodwork of a window that is within reach of his cage. He also gnawed on the front door a bit, and the frame of a door, when his cage was on the other side of the living room. We knew moving him to where he is now would place temptation in his path and sure enough, he made quite a mess of the window frame. For fear that he would gnaw it beyond recognition, we wracked our brains on how to stop him from doing it. Moving him back to the other spot isn't an option in winter because it's too near the front door and he'd get cold drafts every time we let the dogs in and out. I finally asked for advice from a cockatoo forum, and someone said "Hard plastic over the window?" and I thought, Plexiglass! So we went and got a sheet of that and put it over the whole window, frame and all, and hung the curtain on the other side of the window, on the enclosed porch, because he's also determined to destroy the curtains and yanked that one down several times. The others have nice beak holes in them. LOL Hubby says Rocky yanks the curtain down because it obscures his view. So we only pull it closed at night, and with it on the outside, he complains but can't do anything about it. He occasionally pecks at the Plexiglass and touches it with his tongue and then gives us dirty looks, but it did the trick. He can't chew on the window frame anymore.
Rocky 'Too took a notion to gnaw on the woodwork of a window that is within reach of his cage. He also gnawed on the front door a bit, and the frame of a door, when his cage was on the other side of the living room. We knew moving him to where he is now would place temptation in his path and sure enough, he made quite a mess of the window frame. For fear that he would gnaw it beyond recognition, we wracked our brains on how to stop him from doing it. Moving him back to the other spot isn't an option in winter because it's too near the front door and he'd get cold drafts every time we let the dogs in and out. I finally asked for advice from a cockatoo forum, and someone said "Hard plastic over the window?" and I thought, Plexiglass! So we went and got a sheet of that and put it over the whole window, frame and all, and hung the curtain on the other side of the window, on the enclosed porch, because he's also determined to destroy the curtains and yanked that one down several times. The others have nice beak holes in them. LOL Hubby says Rocky yanks the curtain down because it obscures his view. So we only pull it closed at night, and with it on the outside, he complains but can't do anything about it. He occasionally pecks at the Plexiglass and touches it with his tongue and then gives us dirty looks, but it did the trick. He can't chew on the window frame anymore.
At this point she doesn't try to mess with the walls too much.. but argh, those fish tanks... she is relentless. Constantly trying to find a way to chew on the fish tanks and eat weird fishy things that she should definitely not eat. Always a battle