Rescue bird is obsessed with dad
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00:00Coco was bonded to the father, and as he was ill, they were looking to rehome her.
00:05We are Dan and Marcella, and this is Coco's story for GeoBeats.
00:08Coco came to us at 31 years of age. She lived for her entire life with this one family.
00:18They got her when they were in their 30s, and they're now in their 60s.
00:22The father had some medical issues that required them to rehome Coco.
00:30The local adoption agency put us in contact with them, and she just went straight over to me
00:35and was perfectly happy on me, as if she was just transferring her bond to that dad over to me.
00:40The previous owners saw that, and they were comfortable saying,
00:42she's perfectly happy with you guys.
00:45We've done all the background research, knew what we were getting into in terms of adopting a macaw,
00:49which is not a small responsibility.
00:52They describe it as having a toddler in the house for the next 60 years.
00:56I knew that I was going to have to do some work to connect with her,
01:00especially with the fact only I had experience with birds before,
01:04and I was going to be the person mostly taking care of Coco.
01:09In the first few weeks, she is adopting a new flock. We are her new flock.
01:14There's a lot of trust building in that process.
01:18One thing that we did was to make sure, give her the space to observe us
01:22and learn our noises, our movements.
01:25We had kids to keep the household the same way,
01:28so that she adjusts to what is going to be her future.
01:38It's hard for us to say how much she was out of the cage,
01:40but certainly the previous owners loved her.
01:46She did not fly for much of her first 30 years of life.
01:49She's still very insecure about flying,
01:52and she also developed some sort of arthritis or muscle atrophy,
01:56so she has a really bad posture.
01:58We built a fairly large habitat inside of our house.
02:00As well, we built a large outdoor aviary.
02:02She's inquisitive and curious and a little bit mischievous.
02:09When the kids are playing rough or being a little noisy,
02:12or when our other parrot, Lego, gets too chatty,
02:16she will say, stop it or shut up.
02:19She's asking, what are we doing, guys?
02:23She will pull those words out in context.
02:38We rehabilitated Caesar and we found his forever home.
02:44One of the reasons why we fostered rather than adopted Caesar
02:47was because he very much had a big crush on Coco.
02:50And Caesar wasn't Coco's man, so she did not accept that,
02:54and that frustrated him.
02:59We have Lego now.
03:03Lego also aged out of his first family,
03:06and they reached out to see if we would take care of him.
03:09They are like siblings. They put up with each other.
03:13Coco will get very jealous if she's with them.
03:17She thinks I'm her boyfriend.
03:20I know I'm not her favorite person,
03:22but she also knows that I'm the person who takes care of her.
03:25We do have a really good relationship,
03:27but it's very clear that she has her boundaries
03:30and that I need to respect.
03:35Kids know that with parrots,
03:37it's a lot of permission-based training.
03:39Everybody's unequal.
03:42She's like a cousin that's living with you the rest of your life.
03:45We take Coco on walks in the neighborhood.
03:48We will spend days camping, and she loves exploring with us.
03:54It's a very, very cool experience
03:55to sit on a Sunday afternoon with your coffee in the sun
03:57and just cuddle with your bird.
04:14Parrot TV