Photo by Jamieleigh Location: Moab, Utah Flying: Blue fronted Amazon parrot "Storm"

I received this email from my dear friend Jeanne, who has Storm. I just had to share it, as it had me rolling this morning!

Today was a pretty painful day for me and so I didn't do a great deal of moving around. That is until I decided I had completely had enough of being indoors and just sitting trying to "rest" through the pain. Oh man did I get a lesson in Amazon intelligence! I hope you are up for a good laugh! I went out to feed Storm his dinner and decided to fly him in the aviary before feeding him and for his food. Well, that turned into a half hour discussion, both in words and singing to him and he answered me and decided I didn't need to finish any sentence at all. He loved the singing part, but, I was singing "Storm needs to fly, he needs to fly over there" and at the same time he was singing back at me, while bobbing up and down and fluffing all up "No I not, no I don't, not not not!" "Can't do it, have a heart attack, not not not." When I finally stopped laughing and could stand up straight I talked to him, pointed to a perch and said "you need to fly over there, it's not that far, you can do it." He looked me in the face and calmly said "No I not, I'll have a heart attack." I told him "you have to, don't you want to fly?" he just looked me calmly in the face and said "Noooo." I didn't have the video camera because I had no intentions of doing any of this when I went outside. John came out and saw me with Storm because he could hear me in the house. He went back in and got Sheri to come out and watch. This went on for at least a half hour. Storm did eventually fly, but, not very far and he was so proud of himself, he went to a different perch than the one I had asked him to go to. He had to make a mid air turn and fly higher to get to the other perch! What a stubborn brat. It was so funny. Just thought you would like to know the old boy is still as stubborn as ever! If I can, I will try again tomorrow and have John video it. It should be hysterical if Storm will do it in front of the camera.

Article by Jamieleigh Womach. She has been working with parrots and toucans since the age of 17. She isn’t homeless but is home less than she prefers to be. She travels the world with her husband, daughter, and a flockfull of parrots whom she shares the stage with.