Success! I have no idea how
it has happened, but Fig is now, for all appearances, cooperatively toilet “trained”.
What this means is that she can now sit on my shoulder around the house without
having any “accidents”. This is a double achievement on her part.
First, she has finally realized that
being on my shoulder is safe, whereas before she always wanted to be in my lap.
She never poops if I am holding her, or if she is sitting in my lap, even if
something really frightens her, because being embraced, or coddled effectively
makes her feel protected. So pooping on me is not something she wants to do, it
is something that is triggered by fear, and when she is afraid, she may not be
able to help herself. Being up on my shoulder in the house, with a cat around,
and TV, and unusual noises, and kids, and things, and an environment in which
things are constantly changed, moved, different day to day (Crows are hyper
aware of small changes in their environment) simply made her too nervous. Now,
however, she has made the leap out of her safety blanket space, and into ours.
Her space is still somewhere she wants to be, but she now happily spends hours
in our space comfortably without the need to sit in my lap and be reassured.
Now she sits on my shoulder, and feels safe and comfortable, even if I am
sitting down, which puts us much nearer the cat and kids. This is huge leap of
confidence, and trust for Fig which I was not expecting her to make so
suddenly. The other day, I had two kids in the house, both rowdy, one rather
obnoxiously in the face of the poor Crow…but Fig handled it all very calmly, without pooping!
Fig is so communicative; you
can really understand what she is telling you. I can gesture to her, do you
want to come down to my lap, or up to my shoulder, and she can clearly state
her wish to move, or not to move.
She has not merely decided
that my shoulder is safe, what is going on is much more than this. What she is
saying to me is, I will go onto your shoulder, even though it still makes me
nervous, because I want to be a big girl. It is exactly the same thing as when
parents send their kid to the store, or let them ride around the block on their
own for the very first time. The kid is nervous still, maybe even worried,
perhaps afraid, but the kid is saying, I am ready to face my fear, and I want
to try, in part because they know they must grow up, and in part because they want to
please, impress, and receive praise from their parent for their bold
achievement. This is exactly what is going on with Fig.
Now, getting her shouldered
in the house, was easy. She has been able to sit on my shoulder for more than
two years now. The issue was that she has been too afraid to not have accidents
when up there, or have stress build up to untolerable levels, causing her to act out, and need a break. I suspected I could get her to the point where she would agree
not to poop on me though, because she has been accident free when I carry her
around town, or sit her on my lap for as long as I can remember. Something
about the shoulder was just too insecure though. Now, thank goodness, it is no longer
an issue for her, and this means she can spend time with more than one person
in the house, she can do dishes with us, she can sit at the table, and she can
be a fully active family member.
Fig’s second achievement is
her toilet training success. She is still dependent on a human to get her to
her toileting spot, but now amazingly she has started to notify me when she
needs “to go”. This is not merely a litter boxing effect at work; she has
decided very clearly, that she is deliberately going to communicate with me
because she realizes that is what I want her to do, what I expect from her. It’s a real Eureka
moment for her, and for us. She is very clearly telling me, and I mean actually
looking me in the eye, and saying in her own words, “Oh, I get it! You want me
to tell you when I gotta go! Right, no problem. Don’t worry.” Again, I find myself trying to explain
something very difficult to describe here.
Okay, so she is sitting on
my shoulder, for example. And I look up at her, and she does her usual look
back at me right in the eye, and “gurrs” softly to acknowledge eye contact. And
perhaps she wags her tail, or plays with my hair a bit. Or maybe she softly
ambles a bit, shifting her weight foot to foot. Or maybe she looks up, then
back, or adjusts an eye. There are so many small motions that she does, and
they are all telling, all communicative, and no one is enough on its own to be
a full sentence. These head tilts, eye winks, foot fidget tapdancing, tail
wags, beak lifts, feather ruffles, and utterances are a fluid, contiguous
stream which segue into meanings and action based on context. And while I still
find myself guessing at a lot of what Fig does or says or does, she has made
one thing very clear, she has said to me, “Okay, I get it. You want me to communicate
when I need to go potty. No problem.” And if I ask her, “Do you need to go?”
her response is very clearly nuanced as either, “Don’t worry about it.” or “Yeah,
maybe I can go.” or “Uh, Matt, I really gotta go. Hurry up!”
We have now had four days
together in the house, accident free, up on the shoulder. I even stuffed her
full of food just to make certain it isn’t a fluke. It is nothing short of a
Xmas miracle.
Next, I cannot wait to get
Fig confident enough to bound about person to person, shoulder to shoulder, socializing as much as
she likes, with whoever she fancies, and building her own relationships, and
finally, bounding off to the toilet entirely on her own, and hopefully flushing
it too. She already, ironically, goes
bounding about in search of the cat although she is terrified of the cat. She
intentionally jumps down to get closer to her in certain situations, and when she gets close, she pulls this cat whisperer face and posture which just mesmerizes the cat. Fig deliberately
creates situations where the cat is inclined to chase her across the house at high speed. It
is seriously as if she is, no joking, training the cat. I mean, as best I can
tell, the Crow is in fact, teaching the cat, by play, and repetition, not to
attack, to stop short, to pursue to a certain place, then halt on command. She
is taking serious risks, and flirting with death, but like a flutist to a king
cobra, she appears to be in complete control. It’s madness. Wonderful madness.
I even wonder if she might be copying me by expressing approval, and disapproval
to the cat. Or teaching the cat the game we usually play at the park where I chase her from point a to point b and back repreatedly. I shall be writing more about this again.
I digress. Just to make
certain I have accurately recorded this. I did not train Fig to be toilet
trained. I simply expressed mild disapproval when appropriate, and she caught on. She has always understood the meaning of poop, it is a word she picked
up very early on as a youngster, and on her own has understood very quickly too that I don’t
want to pick her up until she poops. She has understood this so well in fact,
that I can tell if she wants to be picked up or not, when I approach, by if she
poops or not. A poop means, Yep, I am ready to go! Please pick me up!
Likewise, I never trained
her not to poop when I hold her walking around town. Usually, I just sweep her
legs back, and she relaxes and goes to sleep reclined on my arm, either
upright, upside down or sideways. She does not mind either way. She simply won’t
poop in these positions.
Nor did I ever teach her not
to poop on my lap. She decided that on her own. She naturally recognizes me and
my person, and I guess she either has too much respect, or too much self-consciousness
to go in proximity to others.
And finally, I have not
taught her to inform me when she needs to go to the bathroom if she is on my
shoulder, or perched on my arm, or somewhere in the house. I simply told her, Please don't poop, whenever she alighted on me or furniture.
The point is very much that
I have not taught her anything. Yes.
This means several things. It means that Crows have a self awareness, and self-consciousness. They have awareness of others, and respect for them. They have awareness of
a common space, and respect for it. But most importantly by far, this means that Fig, that Crows
have awareness of the expectations of others, any respect for those expectations. They try to meet others' expectations, because they desire approval and praise. They understand the tone of your voice. They learn your vocabulary, even if they do not manage, or decide to mimick or use it themselves. They learn, just as a human child learns, by listening, observing,
and remembering what happens in what context.
Everything Fig has achieved
as far as toilet training stems from her own abilities to listen, to remember,
to understand, percieve situations, and others' wants, and to act to receive positive feedback.
BUT Fig does not merely seek
to please. She does have her own boundaries. She does want time alone. She
does want what she wants, and she does have opinions which need listening to. She
is not simply a robot trying to serve a master, not at all.
As one example, she recently
objects to using the toilet room when I take her to go potty. This is an inconvenient fact that is going to put
a bump in the road I have planned to travel towards full, actual toilet
training, where she uses a human bathroom, and flushes the toilet on her own. She
has an issue with the toilet room. It is a small, typical Japanese toilet room, so
she finds it rather claustrophobic. She feels cornered. She has recently told me in no uncertain
terms that she will sit on my shoulder without having accidents. But at almost
the exact same time, she has decided to tell me that she really is not a fan of
the toilet room. Instead she tells me, she would prefer to poop from her usual perch,
the one in the “bath” room, not the toilet room, the exact room I am trying, eventually, to extricate her from over
time. She has even invented a game, all on her own, which she often does. When
she wants to go to the bathroom, she flies to the end of the laundry room, as
far from the entrance to the “bath” room as possible. She is saying, You open
the bathroom door, and hold up both arms, and I will hop across and into the “bath”
room to use the toilet. She is saying, I like this game, and I like going to the
bathroom in there, NOT in there. She has figured out a clever way to get two things that she
wants, in exchange for doing the one thing that I want. This is how clever these animals
are folks.
This little game of hers
makes me think again, more deeply, when I am watching the wild Crows in the
trees, and on buildings, what significance, what meaning the place they choose
to sit has. Sitting in a certain place can be a powerful way to communicate to
everyone who can see you, it’s time to head off to the roost, or time to go
foraging, etc… That Fig is now doing this behavior with me using place as
communication, talking to me from my shoulder, playing with my hair, and other
things….are signs that she is freely, naturally communicating. It is exhilarating. It also has me a bit worried, because she seems to be an incredibly capable negotiator. Who knows what she's going to be negotiating next!?
