Cocky and the Cockatoo

In tiny cages. Cocky the African Grey Parrot and Jacko the Australian Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. We grew up with them and didn’t think anything of parrots in cages. Poor things.

But when you see a free-flying one and realise Jacko never flew five metres, never mind five kilometres, it makes ya think. Friend Steve Reed ‘shot’ this one in his neighbour’s tree in Brisbane, and put it on his blog.

Also left-handed, I see – as was Jacko. Cocky was right-handed.

I commented on Steve’s blog: So amazing to me that this can be a bird that flies free and visits you! We had one in a cage, poor thing. My old man got him from an old lady in Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu Natal who had had it for – you know – forty years, and then he had it for – you know – forty years. These numbers don’t get reduced. They grow.
And we grew up with Jacko. Who suddenly laid an egg and became ‘she,’ but kept her name Jacko. Poor thing.

~~~oo0oo~~~

And what happened to them? “Given away” yet again. To a ‘Mnr Boshoff’ in Krugersdorp or Klerksdorp, who ‘trained’ parrots and put on shows where he would demonstrate how Jacko could ‘dance’ and Cocky could ‘talk.’ He was very well-known and that made it a good thing. Except well-known and ‘respected’ bird-cage people aren’t always what they say they are. Here’s what a raid on a parrot breeder found when the South African vice-president of the parrot breeders association’s aviaries in Randburg were raided this week: 150 dead parrots and the live birds in cages in shocking condition! Strange how almost all people who keep wild animals say how they LOVE them, but as far as I’m concerned it’s all Dancing Bears – they’re kept for money, fame, personal ego, etc. For their humans, not for the animals themselves.

~~oo0oo~~

Here they are flocking in the wild:

Mea culpa: While raising kids we let them keep things in cages too! Only fair to admit that! A gerbil, a hamster, a snake.

~~oo0oo~~