Cockatoo jokes

Gina Spadafori writes about her parrot’s practical jokes and reminded me of some of our Roni’s (a cockatoo) tricks.

His favourite is getting the dogs’ attention by barking. Often during the day he’ll just start barking and get the dogs all riled up as well. Another of his favourites is increasing the dogs agitation before we go out on the main walk of the day, especially if the flatcoats are exceptionally full of energy. The end result is typically patience training for the two.

Luckily we don’t get many phone calls so Roni hasn’t been learning how to mimic that sound. But he has been practising the sound of our phones when a text message arrives and I (generally) get a call, causing rapid action in me and the dogs. When he finally learns the whole tune and fools me even once, it’ll be time to change the tone (and condition myself to wake up to it). Before I entered the scene, it was Anna who got the calls…