Hyperactive Houdini

The new parakeet was nameless for the first while after we got him. Before long, however, he showed us what his name ought to be: Houdini, the name of a legendary escape artist.

Houdini's wings had been clipped before we brought him home from the pet shop. I don't think he even missed his biggest wing feathers. His flight patterns were in good shape, thank you very much. He outmaneuvered us time after time when we tried to catch him.

We've had birds before that played with their three slide-up cage doors. We always reassured ourselves by saying that it would be impossible for a bird to hook his beak around the door and keep it in the "up" position while maneuvering out through the opening at the same time. We were under this illusion until about three days after we got this bird.

We first tried to interfere with Houdini's willfulness by fastening down the cage doors with twisties. This worked, but was a huge inconvenience when we wanted to give him food or water or get him out of the cage to gentle him. Next, we put weights on the feed and water doors--a hook with a sliding latch that closes the "eye" around the metal "bars" of the door. We could open the doors easily when necessary, but the extra weight would deter Houdini. This worked for a while.

This week, however, Houdini was again on a home tour schedule of his own making, and yesterday Hiromi decided it was time for some corrective action. After another escape and subsequent capture, Hiromi and Shane clipped some more of his wing feathers. Feeling smug, Hiromi opened his hand to show Houdini the new reality of his flight limitations, and Houdini soared off as if nothing had changed. Big mistake. More determined now, Hiromi and Shane took him back to the barbershop and removed another layer of wing feathers. The next flight attempt was more satisfactory from their perspective and less so from Houdini's.

Last night, however, Joel and I were chatting in the dining room when I heard a familiar whirring sound from the living room. I looked at Joel. "Did I just hear what I'm afraid I heard?"

Joel laughed. "I think so," he said, already on a search for the errant bird. He found him on the floor next to the coffee table. Before Joel caught him, Houdini slipped under the sofa where the skirt reaching all the way to the floor safely hid him in the dark. We tried to stir him out by sliding a yardstick underneath. He protested loudly but did not show himself till we propped up the skirt at one end and corralled him toward it with the yardstick. With a rag in hand to drape over him, Joel caught him and held him for a bit before putting him back in his cage. Houdini retaliated by biting his hand, hard.

We talked about what we could do next and Joel went rummaging in the catchall drawer. "These should help at least temporarily," he said, returning with a small screwdriver with a pocket clip on the handle, and picking up a large pen with a clip on his way through the dining room. He hooked the pen and screwdriver onto the clips already hanging on the cage doors.

Today Houdini is very busy with his doors again. Do you suppose he's engaged in a muscle-building effort? someone wondered aloud this morning. We add weights and he takes on the challenge of using them to strengthen his neck muscles.

"Turd bird," Shane has taken to calling him. Then, darkly: "I have an idea for taking care of this escape problem. We could do it with one more trip to the barbershop and one clip right around the neck." Naughty Shane.

This morning I heard rhythmic thumping sounds from the cage, different from the door-banging sounds. Houdini was repeatedly going back and forth from his perch to the floor of the cage, thumping onto the cage floor each time--all this at a dizzying speed. Between rounds of this he attacked the clips on the cage doors. By all appearances, his next plan is to gnaw through the plastic.

I think Houdini is hyperactive. I'm afraid we're on our way to discovering what many a parent of a hyperactive child has found. Long after the whole family is worn out with the antics of the high-energy individual among them, he'll still be going strong, by turns endearing himself to others with his spontaneity and zest for life, and regularly pushing them to the limits of exasperation. At least this hyperactive individual can be confined to a cage with no pangs of conscience or threatened charges of abuse.

For some reason I'm not sure I should have written that can be confined to a cage just that way. Make that a maybe.

P.S. I just heard the whir again. Hiromi is looking for Houdini.