He says “bye” or “see you later” every time I leave the house.
He laughs at my jokes. He laughs at other people’s jokes. He laughs at nothing at all.
On that vein, he has several different laughs. The most common are a quiet “heh heh” chuckle, a sudden “HAHA!” and a deep and extended “HO HO HO” like Santa Claus (we have no idea where he learned that one).
He makes great commentary when watching a movie (usually saying a surprised “oh!” or a knowing “ohhhhh” at key moments or laughing at completely inappropriate times)
Sometimes we have back-and-forth “conversations” where I feel like we’re actually communicating and I realize that this is probably the closest I will ever get to speaking with an intelligence that is completely inhuman
Things I don’t love about living with Ripley:
poop everywhere
he loves to chew holes in drywall
it’s like babysitting a toddler who has wirecutters attached to his face
he bites me
my housemates fear him
(Currently I have a bruise about the size of an egg on the soft part of my arm near my elbow because I told him he had to get off my lap and sit on a chair instead and He Did Not Want To. He is kind of a jerk.)
I think one of the funniest things I’ve accidentally taught my parrot is yelling “WHAT?”
The best part is that if he says something weird and and someone else says “what???” he usually repeats what he just said.
Like just now, I was cooking in the kitchen and he heard me boiling water so he asked “you wanna noodle?” but I couldn’t quite hear him so I yelled “WHAT” and he repeated “you wanna noodle?”
Mostly he just likes yelling it, though.
Less funny things I’ve accidentally taught my parrot:
to make the smoke detector noise every time someone makes toast
to make gross eating noises at us when he wants us to share our food
to announce that he is about to poop just about every time he poops
to demand payment in the form of peanuts for every instance of good behavior
no seriously he says “I get a peanut” every single time and gets VERY MAD if not given a peanut
Why would announcing he’s about to poop be a bad thing?? In that time you could get him to a place he could poop so you don’t have to clean up a mess or be shit on, right?
That was the hope, but he tends to say “poop!” or “go potty!” right AS HE IS POOPING.
He does, however, make an attempt to poop on command (since he knows what “poop” means now), so that helps prevent him pooping on things.
The model/rival method does work really well to get Ripley’s attention. As long as you have at least two people in the room, you can just pick up random objects and start talking about them as though they deeply interest you–”is this a yellow paper?!” “WOW yes that IS a yellow paper, can I touch that paper?” “yes, here’s it is! Can I have that pineapple back?” “no! It’s not a pineapple! It’s a paper!” and you just go on like this until your bird completely loses interest or you start feeling insane.
We generally don’t spend a lot of time modeling, though. We usually only do it about one or two objects a day. Mostly, we take things he says seriously. In theory that’s like, “sure, sure, you respond with positive attention to the sounds you want to hear” but in reality it means saying totally bonkers stuff all the time until it becomes normal.
Like, as much as possible, any time Ripley says an actual word, we reward him by paying attention to it and trying to chat him up about it. This can be difficult, because he spends all day making random sounds … so it becomes kind of a normal human response to just tune him out so you can complete a single coherent thought. So you have to get in the mindset of thinking your bird is actually a small person in the room with you who has something important to say (and he is!). Even if he’s mostly talking about vegetables or poop.
Even when he’s stringing real words together, Ripley talks just to hear his own voice a lot. We still try to take him seriously even when he’s saying mildly nonsensical stuff (though this may also be a reason he says “what???” so often). It directly rewards him with our attention and it shows him that words are important. But it’s also basically allowing him to train US to respond to him at a whim. It’s a two-way street.
This kind of attentive listening and responding to him means that he’s gotten really good at conversational filler. You can sit down and talk about anything in his direction and if he’s in a chatty mood he’ll just start responding with “oh!” and “uh huh” and “yeah!” like he’s really fascinated by what you’re saying. And to be fair, he probably is.
Does he do conversational filler when you’re talking about something you’re unhappy about? Like, would he make sympathetic “oh” noises if you were complaining about your work day?
Oh, absolutely. He says “ohhh” and “awww” in a very sympathetic way to us and to the people on the TV. He also says “okay” and “WOW” a lot (when he says “WOW” it’s two syllables and it’s got a diphthong like “wah-oww” and it can sound either completely genuine or very sarcastic). Every once in a while he says “oh noooo” or “oh my gaw.”
He also laughs. It’s either at a completely appropriate moment, like after a joke, or at a completely inappropriate moment, like a shocked silence.
Ripley has a very good grasp of the word “touch” and we often use it as a command word to get him to try to be less afraid of new things or to ask his permission to pet him. He knows if we ask him to “touch” a person or object, he’ll be praised for gently tapping his beak against it. He also knows exactly what we mean when we ask him not to touch something,
Today I yelled at him for biting the wall and he did probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever seen him do: he went around touching stuff in the room and saying “no” and staring at me to make sure I was watching him do it.
a few nights ago, I dreamt I was introducing myself— getting registered at some kind of event where I’d be needing a nametag.
the coordinator (warm, assuring) asked for my pronouns, and I waffled a bit before admitting that— while I’m generally known as a her, out of practicality mostly— that I’d like being referred to as a them sometimes. the volunteer smiled, nodded, and handed me a completed badge declaring me they/them.
and in that deep subconscious instant, and even now just remembering it, I’ve got this indescribable sense of relief and calm and elation and bliss.
I kinda think I was visited by some kind of dream-angel.
*Your Guardian Angel Chicken descends from on high with validation and love*
today's bird 