Dogs
Penguin Fantasy!
On the 9th Day, God made a Dog
Cosmo Talks: Every Parrot Needs a Problem
Craige: Every parrot needs a pen problem to solve
By Betty Jean Craige
Have you ever tried to get dressed with a parrot clinging to your wrist? It’s impossible! Or almost impossible.
First, if your parrot is on your left wrist, you have to hold your blouse with your left hand and put your right arm into the right sleeve. Then you have to switch the parrot from your left wrist to your right wrist and put your left arm into the left sleeve. Then you have to button your blouse with the parrot bobbing up and down as you use both hands to maneuver the buttons into the button holes. You try to keep your parrot from grabbing a button, or your necklace, with her beak.
My parrot is Cosmo, an African grey, who loves me so much she sometimes refuses to get off my wrist.
I also do the laundry and the dishes with Cosmo hanging on, and I open jars and bottles. Occasionally Cosmo chuckles.
I don’t. At least, not out loud.
You’re probably wondering why in the world I allow myself to be ruled by a 16-ounce bird.
This is why: Cosmo has extraordinary intelligence combined with the genes of free-flying ancestors. She still has a wild spirit — as do all birds, even caged birds — but she also has a human education, sort of. She has a great sense of humor, the ability to talk, an awareness of what I’m thinking and an infectious laugh. We love each other.
I want her to have a happy life, even if she’s stuck in a house with one human, two dogs and no companions of her own kind.
To compensate for the absence of the thrills she would have gotten in Africa’s rain forests, I give her as much intellectual excitement as I can. I watch animal shows on “television” — that is, the computer — with her. She is most fond of birdy webcams. I take her “in a car” to visit schools, churches and dinner clubs. Together, we give a course for my new favorite educational institution, OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
I let Cosmo wander freely around the house. After all, it’s her home, too. I let her explore the interior of my closets, cabinets and drawers. I let her eat off my plate. I let her ride around the house on my wrist.
Sometimes I wonder whether this is normal. But at the age of 66 I don’t worry much about what’s normal — or about what other folks may think of me.
At the moment, Cosmo is stranded on top of a waste basket trying to figure out how to get down. I don’t know how she got there. She is muttering, “Cosmooooooooooo!” — in the tone of voice I use when I find her where she shouldn’t be. I think I’ll let her solve the problem.
I wonder what is going on in her little brain.
Actually it’s not so little, for a bird. Parrots have big brains relative to the size of their body. In fact, parrots and crows have a brain-to-body size ratio comparable to that of chimpanzees and gorillas.
McGill University animal behaviorist Louis Lefebvre, who finds a correlation between brain size and intelligence, has developed an “innovativeness” index to measure a bird’s “IQ.” He defines intelligence as the ability to adapt to different challenges, and he ranks crows the highest. Before coming to that conclusion, Lefebvre collected bird stories from around the world. Among them is the account of the Japanese carrion crows who place walnuts in front of tires when cars are stopped for a red light, and then recover the crushed nuts after the cars roll over them.
I would give the African grey high marks, but I’m happy to have the crow be valedictorian. I like crows and ravens.
Anyway, if Cosmo is as intelligent as she appears to be, she needs challenges to overcome and problems to solve.
She has already solved the problem of taking apart pens without breaking them.
One day Cosmo scurried into my study from her room. I picked her up, and then looked at her feet. Oh, no! Was she bleeding? “Cosmo!” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
I carried her with me back into her room, not knowing what I’d find. But no glass, no blood. Thank goodness. Only a big, irregular stain of red ink seeping into the floor. Cosmo had dismantled the red pen that I kept at the back of the second shelf of my telephone stand.
I wonder whether I should supervise her more carefully.
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email address is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website address is www.cosmotalks.com.
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Cosmo Talks: Maybe we kind of miss the wild by Betty Jean Craige
Every morning when I get up, I see my faithful little mother squirrel watching me move through the house from the deck railing where she awaits her breakfast. She knows my habits, and I know hers. We are well acquainted with each other. We like each other.
So I put out bird seed and deer corn for her and her fellow squirrels, chipmunks and birds of all kinds who dine here.
Then I go back inside to fix breakfast for Cosmo, Kaylee, Mary and me. Cosmo is an African grey parrot. Kaylee and Mary are American Eskimo dogs.
Today, after we’d eaten, Cosmo scurried over to the sliding glass door and summoned me: “Look, that’s birdy!”
Cosmo had seen three gorgeous crows land on the railing to join the squirrels for breakfast. Cosmo loves crows. She called out to them: “Caw, caw!”
Mary heard Cosmo and raced out the doggy door to make the crows flap their wings and fly onto the roof. Mary takes great pleasure in causing a flurry of feathers.
Kaylee heard Mary and barked.
Then I went into the bathroom to put on my makeup. Suddenly, I heard a commotion behind me. Cosmo was on the floor yanking the comforter, and Mary was on the bed indignantly trying to get Cosmo to release it.
I turned around, ready to stop the action. Cosmo looked up at me, dropped the comforter, and said, “Hi.”
I live in a zoo, I thought in exasperation.
But no, not really. Residents of a zoo live in confinement and interact mainly with the zookeeper. They are under the zookeeper’s control.
I live in a village whose residents happen to be of different species, some of them making their life indoors, some of them making their life outdoors. They interact with each other and don’t obey me. These animals aren’t under anybody’s control. They still have a teeny bit of wildness in them — well, more than a teeny bit in Cosmo’s case.
I like them that way. I want them all to feel free to be their true animal selves.
We humans love our animals, be they feathery, furry, hairy or scaly, be they indoor or outdoor. And we want them to love us.
What’s interesting is that humans all over the world keep animals as pets, and have done so for millennia. Paleontologists have unearthed evidence for the domestication of dogs some 15,000 years ago and the domestication of cats some 9,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have discovered pictures of dogs resembling today’s sight hounds in Egyptian tombs of 3000 BC, and a cat with a collar in an Egyptian tomb of 2400 BC, more or less. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, they’ve found depictions of caged doves and parrots.
Of course, Egypt is not the only ancient culture that kept pets. But Egyptians left good records.
I wonder whether the keeping of pets is related to our coming in out of the wild and getting civilized, when we became indoor people. Maybe we civilized humans don’t want a complete separation from the wild.
I read that 39 percent of American households include at least one dog, 33 percent at least one cat, 12 percent at least one fish, 4.6 percent at least one bird and 35 percent at least one plant.
Nearly 17 percent of us feed wild birds. Probably the same 17 percent feed wild squirrels, though maybe not intentionally. I couldn’t find statistics for squirrel feeding.
We humans have come a long way from the time we lived in the wilderness and huddled together around a fire in fear of wolves, bears and mountain lions, whose scary eyes we thought we saw gleaming in the nighttime forest. Now we’re not afraid of wolves, bears or mountain lions, for we’ve shooed them out of our cities. And for the most part we’ve put them on reservations — wildlife sanctuaries, preserves, national parks — where we can enjoy their wildness safely. We’ve made them afraid of us.
But we must miss them. So we invite their tame relatives — dogs and cats, as well as birds, bunnies, ferrets and fish — into our homes, to cuddle, to play with us, to eat our food, even to doze alongside of us when we sleep. We are comforted by their presence. We love them.
I know whereof I speak. Whenever I settle down to read or write or watch a movie, I am aware that Kaylee is somewhere nearby quietly watching over me. Cosmo is also nearby watching over me, though she’s not quiet. They keep me happy. Mary, however, is not nearby. She is usually in the bedroom watching over her dog biscuits.
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email address is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website address is www.cosmotalks.com.
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Propane by Dr Robert E. McGinnis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m a fan of dog books – but this one was the best I’ve read in a very long time. It even surpasses that other one that’s been on the NY Times bestseller list for months and months. (I’ve read both and loved this one more!)
I recommend it – it’s terrific and inspiring.
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Cosmo Talks: The Reward is Wanting to Learn by Betty Jean Craige
When Cosmo and I visit elementary schools, the children often will request of me: “Make Cosmo talk” or “Make Cosmo get out of her cage.”
I tell them, “I can’t make Cosmo do anything.”
Cosmo is a female African grey parrot who speaks meaningfully. But she doesn’t speak on command. Actually, she doesn’t do anything on command — not speak, not get out of her cage, not go to bed, not come out of the cabinet, not even be a good bird. She does what she likes, most of the time.
I’ve been asked, “How did you teach Cosmo to speak?” I have to reply, “I didn’t teach her to speak. She learned on her own.” Then I explain.
Cosmo learned to speak by listening to me speak to her. I used a simplified English in the months before she uttered her first word. I’d say: “Cosmo wanna peanut?” I’d give her a peanut. “Cosmo wanna go to kitchen?” I’d take her to the kitchen. “Cosmo wanna kiss?” I’d lift her up for a kiss. “Cosmo wanna cuddle?” We’d cuddle, and I’d say, “I love you” and “Cosmo is a good bird.”
I’ve told this wonderful story before. At the age of 12 months, one December evening, when perched atop the cage in my bedroom, Cosmo said quietly, “Bird.” Then, “Cosmo is a bird.” Wow.
“Cosmo is a bird! Cosmo is a good bird! I love you,” I exclaimed.
Thereafter, whenever Cosmo said something to me, I said something back to her, but not the same thing. I gave her my full attention. I treated her like an important feathery little person. We conversed. That’s how she expanded her vocabulary.
I never asked Cosmo to repeat a word after me. I never gave her a treat for performing. Cosmo is not a performer.
Cosmo spoke because she wanted to speak. Her only incentive to speak was the desire to communicate with me. Her only reward for speaking was the pleasure of communicating with me.
She loved me. She still does. I love her. I think all Earth’s residents want to communicate with those they love.
Recently, retired UGA elementary education professor Penny Oldfather told me that I was enacting an educational principle dear to her heart: that individuals develop intellectually and creatively more when they are motivated by their own curiosity than when they are motivated by external rewards.
In fact, Penny said, much current research shows that “extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivations, because extrinsic rewards focus the learner’s attention on the reward.” This research challenges the performance-oriented educational philosophy that children need rewards for learning.
I agree with Penny. I’d put it this way: To give Cosmo peanuts for saying the right word after me would reward mimicry and reduce conversation. Cosmo might learn to say “Go, Dawgs!” but not “Where Betty Jean wanna gonna go?”
Cosmo was motivated to speak not solely because I was her significant other who spoke to her. Cosmo was adapting to a cultural environment in which speech gave her some control over her life. She could ask for peanuts and kisses. She could tell me what she wanted to do, and she knew I’d usually say, “OK.” She could bark with the dogs and call the dogs to her.
She could get people to laugh. She could make her own life interesting, even when she was “back in cage.”
Speech was the means to participate in my culture. Cosmo wanted to participate. Of course.
I have learned much from my dear, funny, confident, self-motivated, obviously happy bird. But maybe the greatest lesson she’s taught me through her love of learning is that, most likely, every other feathery, furry or hairy (or even scaly — perhaps) resident of Earth has interests and curiosity, too.
Last night as I was preparing to go out, Cosmo was curious. She and I had this extended conversation:
COSMO: “Where Betty Jean wanna gonna go?”
BETTY JEAN: “Betty Jean gonna go to dinner.”
COSMO: “Betty Jean and Cosmo gonna go in a car?”
BETTY JEAN: “No. Betty Jean gonna go in a car. Cosmo gonna stay home with doggies.”
COSMO: “Doggies gonna go for a walk?” (whereby she understands that the dogs get their leashes and disappear with me for a while).
BETTY JEAN: “No, doggies stay home with Cosmo.”
COSMO: (muttering to herself) “Betty Jean gonna go to work.”
COSMO: (out loud) “Goodbye.”
BETTY JEAN: “Goodbye, Cosmo. Goodbye, doggies. I love you.”
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website is www.cosmotalks.com.