- You guys asked for a cockatoo video.
Okay.
So, I would appreciate it
if you didn't look perfect in this video,
show a little bit of your, don't hurt me bad,
but just like, be a real cockatoo so people don't think
that they're chill and awesome, okay?
Think you can do it?
Without making me fear for my life.
Hey, baby.
I'm going to preface this with most of you that know me,
know that I'm not a fan of cockatoos.
I find them scary, intimidating, psycho, crazy,
neurotic, scary, intimidating,
psycho, crazy, neurotic, scary and intimidating,
and somewhat unpredictable.
So, to put it in perspective, I would rather get bit
by a macaw than this guy.
When Bandit bites me, it's to hurt me, real bad.
His bites suck.
Okay - Okay.
- Okay, seriously, don't be cute in this,
it's gonna give people the wrong impression,
I'm gonna be talking smack about you the whole time,
and I'm gonna look like a liar
if you're good the whole time.
I'm going to try to get footage of when he's at his worst,
because, I'm gonna be honest, it almost happens daily,
where he's not great.
Even today, I went to go get him out of his aviary
and he is like, no, just no interest,
and it's something where, if I push it and I were to push
on his chest to get him to step onto my hand,
which I wouldn't do, I would get nailed.
If I were to peel his little toes up off of the perch
to get him to step up when he's not offering,
I would get nailed.
There's very few times where I can literally slowly
peel his feet off if I absolutely have to get him to step up
for whatever reason and nothing is working
in my bag of tricks, and I peel his feet up,
but I have to keep eye contact going on,
so that I can tell at like any moment,
are you gonna shred me? (bird says something)
What?
Are you gonna shred me, you gonna shred me, no, good.
And lately, he's let me get away with it a couple of times
that I've needed to, but that's not me
to overdo it these guys, where are you going?
Where do you wanna go?
Go, how about not on my notebook, 'cause it's about you,
these are the questions they asked.
Where is he?
They can't even see you now.
There.
My least favorite type of cockatoo
species is-- (bird says something)
Sounded like he said not me.
- Do you love big boy?
- I do love you, I love big boy, he's super cute.
Okay, my least favorite
species-- - Do you love big boy?
Species of cockatoo (laughs)
is not the galah.
Galahs are my favorite type of cockatoo.
- Love big boy.
- Yeah, you're my favorite.
What's up, what do you want so bad?
I don't know what you want.
What are you doing?
(feathers ruffle)
(laughs)
What are you doing here?
Oh my gosh, I can't even get through one question.
I feel like you wanna have a training session.
It's like real bad timing.
He's like why, you got nothing better to do,
you're filming a video.
Do you wanna show them the burrito?
(pretends to bite and chew)
My least favorite-- (bird says something)
species of cockatoo is the umbrella cockatoo.
I'm sorry, I know a lot of you have umbrellas out there,
'cause you comment in everything that you have one,
and that obviously you still have your fingers to type with,
so, I get that some of you are happily with your umbrella
cockatoos, but they are my least favorite.
Why are they my least favorite?
It was the first parrot I was introduced to
besides a budgie, I had a budgie when I was very little.
Umbrella cockatoo was the first parrot I was introduced to
on a much more personal level, and I didn't like it.
The crazy thing is, I never got bit
by that umbrella cockatoo or by any umbrella cockatoo,
I've never been bit because I wear a helmet, I hide
under the couch, I don't show up where they go,
I don't hang out where they hang out.
I did hold that cockatoo and everything, but--
you're so distracting.
Here's the thing, here's why
I don't like umbrella cockatoos.
I find them incredibly difficult to read,
so their body language, I'm just like,
and I think because my first experience was just scary,
not scary for me, but scary for Dave,
I was always worried he was gonna get attacked
and we would be playing, having a good time
and then all of a sudden, he'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
okay, stop, and I just wouldn't see the behavior change.
I feel like nobody's hearing what I'm saying
because you are strutting around.
Sorry!
Well, sorry, dude, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Okay, so, I'm gonna try--
- Come here.
- I'm sorry.
Shh, it's okay, it's okay.
Hi, baby.
Hey, baby.
So, (blows) yeah,
let's keep it calm, let's keep it calm.
(blows)
So, those of you that are not familiar with cockatoos,
he just got heightened by me accidentally dropping stuff
and scaring him, and when he got all heightened
and he said come here,
that was him getting overly heightened
to the point where I could get attacked,
and so that's why I immediately took it down a couple
of notches and tried to calm him down with whispering.
Whispering is what I use to calm him down
as quickly as possible. (blows)
It doesn't always work, but it's my go to.
So, when he gets super heightened and pissed off,
he says come here, but he says like come here.
Anyway, it's a trigger word, so we try not to say it.
He gets real angry and he'll attack, so, okay, focus.
Okay, so, one of the times that I held that umbrella
cockatoo, named Linus, I was holding him,
and Dave's like, hey, make sure you hold his feet
because when I bend over to get into his travel cage
to like clean it out, he's gonna try to attack me,
so just hold on, don't let go,
and I was just like.
What's gonna keep him from being like, hey, this chick
is holding onto me so that I can't attack this guy
I wanna attack, so I might as well just gnaw her hand off.
He didn't, but, you guys, just not cool.
I met a really nice, Dave says it's like,
the nicest umbrella cockatoo in Niagara Falls,
and I was just frickin' terrified,
my energy is awful with umbrellas,
I'm like hmm, they're really cute from over here.
I can appreciate how adorable their voices are,
I just think they're neurotic in captivity,
and they're scary and intimidating
and they have black eyes and they freak me out.
I think about behavior that he does, that I work through
and how if it was an umbrella cockatoo,
I would be locking myself in the bedroom or the closet
and calling for help.
Which, by the way, (blows) sorry,
he's malting, so he's super powdery.
I have to do that, even now, so,
I don't know how to explain it, and maybe you cockatoo
owners out there will help me, in the comments,
of explaining this, but, when any other species of bird
gets upset, I feel like there's tells, like visual tells
of certain feathers raising, or streamlining,
or there's just a certain posture, like,
there's a physical body language change
that tells you what that bird is feeling,
and with cockatoos, I feel like it's more
of an energy shift, like, literally, energy in the room
has changed, and it's like oh, no.
So, I had Bandit out while I was at the dining room table
working on something, and he was hanging out,
and then he was on a chair and he was chilling,
and there was just an energy shift, and I thought
if I videotape this right now, would I be able to explain
to people what changed?
And I thought, I can't, there's nothing about
his body language that is obvious enough to be like,
this is what happened, this is what's going on,
do you wanna be up there, you don't?
So, then, I got up because it was gonna go down,
I could just feel it, I could feel
that he was like not happy, just things changed,
and, don't get into anything
'cause then I'm gonna be screwed.
(laughs)
Are you just like strutting in front of the camera?
My stories suck because I keep getting totally distracted.
So, anyways, I realized that, like, things were gonna
go down, I didn't wanna be sitting in my chair
totally vulnerable, so I got up and I stood in the corner
of the room and looked at him, and just waited
and I could just feel this energy, this tension
building, building, building,
so I picked up a pillow, yeah, guys,
you can't make this stuff up, cockatoo owners,
you know what I'm talking about.
I picked up a pillow, and I held it here,
and then he came at me and attacked me,
he just full on, like, flew at me,
so I held up the pillow and literally,
I saved a picture of the pillow,
I'm gonna try to find it for you, guys.
Just a powder cockatoo splatter on the pillow.
And that was, I held it up in front of my face, you guys,
in front of my face, so, wham pillow, splatter cockatoo,
cockatoo keeps going because angry cockatoos are,
what do you call it, invincible.
If you guys end up seeing me get attacked
in the head by my cockatoo while talking smack
about cockatoos, you all are gonna be like, yeah,
she deserved that, she was talking crap about the species.
I feel like you're gonna get mad at me if I keep
talking in my normal voice.
You gonna come?
No, he does not.
Yes he does, yay.
I'm more comfortable with him here than any--
- Do you love big boy?
- I love big boy.
Than anywhere else in the room,
because he can't, like, fly and attack me,
and he's not likely to do it from here, so,
I know it seems kinda backwards, but,
he's super not content.
I don't remember what I was saying.
Oh yeah, the pillow thing.
After that, I just kinda was like Dave,
and called for help,
because Dave's energy was apparently different
and Bandit stepped right up for him,
but I knew if I approached this guy,
he would just keep coming for me.
And I don't know what changed, but something did.
Do you like to go?
But something did, something changed,
something changed for him, and was I aware of it?
No, because I was working and I thought we were just hanging
out, having a great, you know, quality time,
and we weren't, apparently, so, you know, not in his book.
Also, the bird that is least likely to step up is Bandit.
The bird that is most likely to get emotionally charged
or upset is Bandit, the bird that I am most scared of
in the spring is Bandit.
People always say cockatoos are famous for random biting,
this is him not content, by the way,
he's not wanting to do this,
and I don't know if I should push it for the video,
so you guys can see what a discontent cockatoo
looks like, 'cause I realize I don't really show
the bad stuff, because like I said, I'm wearing a helmet,
I'm under a couch hiding somewhere in a dark little closet.
But, I also don't wanna get hurt, so,
how discontent are you on like a one to 10 scale?
The other thing cockatoos do that I don't feel like other
birds do, necessarily, is they glare.
And Bandit has the worst glare.
It sucks, but he literally, like, does a squinty eye at me,
and it is a full on glare.
Cockatoos are kinda notorious for diving and attacking
your head, just like full on, like, bam,
and then they get you and go.
They're notorious for attacking feet,
chasing you on the ground, being foot chasers,
toe attackers, random attacks, random bites.
I say it with quotations, because they have a reason,
we just can't always figure out what it is.
Male cockatoos are notorious for being scary, hormonal,
cockatoos in general are known for getting over excited,
which is over heightened, over stimulated,
and then totally psycho, and it goes from like party,
to everybody's losing limbs.
They're known for being extremely needy,
emotional, and having random fears or dislikes.
So, I remember Dave telling me, when he was filming a video,
they got a new coffee table, and his umbrella cockatoo
at the time, hated the coffee table and just screamed
non-stop until they moved the coffee table,
'cause it took him a while to figure out what it was
that was triggering the bird.
I've also had a girlfriend who had a goffin's cockatoo,
who hated orange for about a month,
so anything that she had that was orange, out.
He is totally distracted by the fact that he sees
Dave and Capri outside, so, that's the thing about Bandit,
is he, yeah, he sees Dave.
Dave being around changes this guy.
He just wants Dave, he gets super obsessive.
He did attack me in the head the other day
and I got it on film, so I'm gonna show you guys
so you know that I'm not full of crap.
Bandit, boy!
But this is his calling, he's just so,
he's so not content anymore.
Obsessed about getting to Dave.
So, you see me cringing, it's because this can be,
like, here at this level where he's just like oh,
I wanna figure out how to get to Dave,
and then it can get like, it's your fault
I can't get to Dave, and he attacks me.
Do you wanna go just stare at Dave?
We can put you outside in the aviary
and you can just stare at him.
Yeah, so right now he's not stepping up for me,
he's just looking at me.
I'm gonna see if I can show you.
Okay, do you wanna come?
See, he doesn't want to.
If I'm like hey, oh, somebody came in the house.
Do you wanna go, cute little feet, yay,
good job, buddy.
So, I am on a brink with him, I'm on a brink
that could go bad, so I'm just gonna put him away
while I can, without Dave's help,
because Dave's on a workout walk.
(child talking in the background)
I bet, yeah, I didn't realize it was all the birds' bedtime.
Okay, well, that teaches me.
So, this is Bandit, super pissed off.
I'm not gonna say it's random,
but I really don't know why he is pissed,
I don't know if he's just over heightened.
Talking's not helping.
Roll, good boy.
So, I just asked him to roll over
and he responded really well.
Bad hand, good boy.
And I'm dropping the treats for him.
You might get in trouble.
Bandit, come to me, ooh.
To me, good.
Okay.
(voicemail tone)
(voicemail message plays)
So then he stepped up fine,
but I'm going to put him away
'cause I don't trust him so much right now.
But, this is why I don't recommend cockatoos, you guys.
I hopefully got that on video, but, he wasn't flying to me
as much as at me, and he literally dive-bombed my head,
like around here, it didn't hurt
even though I'm pretty sure that was his intention.