I have not updated this blog in some time, but Fig is doing very well. She has been with us for a year and a half now, and she improves more and more. My focus has been to maintain a routine with her as her happiness depends on a regular time schedule of varied activities. Unlike a cat, or a dog, a wild crow rather quickly panics if things are suddenly off by more than a couple of hours, or you ignore them. Anxiety sets in very quickly, and it's a potential killer; it's no joke.
Fig sleeps in a sleeper box, for warmth, a feeling of safety which she cannot get as a lone bird with no flock, a good night's sleep, protection from mosquitoes, and most importantly her own safety; Fig does not like the dark, and she startles easily. If I were to let her sleep on the balcony in the dark, that might be fine, provided it was dead silent, but if anyone goes near the window, makes a slight noise in the dark, Fig's natural startle in the dark is highly augmented by her natural fear of the dark, so she could very likely fly full force into a wall and get injured or even killed trying to dash from some imagined predator. If we go out, and are not going to be back until after dark, I leave the light on for her. If I forget to do that, she will sleep out, but when we come back, I need to enter the house silently, and turn the light on for her, so she does not startle in the dark.
Fig does not go to the bathroom inside her sleeper box, though she will if I feed her something an hour before bed, so she gets no food after 7:00, and goes to bed at 8:30pm. This is a little late, but it helps me to prevent her from getting up at an unreasonable time in the morning. She usually will wait for me to get up before she rises. She really likes snuggling in the towel or fleece blanket in her box. She will crouch down on her breast to give her feet rest. I have even caught her wrapping the blanket around herself a few times, or hiding under it. She does not call in the morning usually, even if she rises before me, and she will wait patiently for her breakfast. If she gets hungry she may call once or twice, but she never fusses, or calls chronically like a cat. She is not persistent, or demanding; perhaps that is a family survival quality of wild Crows to prevent attracting predators to the roost. I had pigeons as a child, and they relentlessly cooed, and pecked at my bedroom's screen door early every morning, demanding that I let them in to perch and sleep inside where I had kept them for their first few months.
Fig comes in and showers with me in the morning in warmer months. She'll have a shower, then me. Then she'll sit on my knee and enjoy having her face washed for thirty minutes if I have the time. Getting her faced washed probably counts as her one most favorite thing in life next to being out in a good gale force wind, which she loves, no matter how cold.
She is very chatty in the morning, and soft, and receptive to affection. She is not a morning person in the least. She grumbles like Popeye, muttering under her breath, saying hello, and I love you repeatedly. She also growls like a Tiger which is our way of playing. Mostly though, she just wants to sit and have her five star spa facial treatment for which she will close her eyes, open her beak a bit, and drift off into relaxation heaven. All she needs is a couple slices of cucumbers over her eyes, and a mud mask. If she needs to go to the bathroom, she will wake up, hop over on her perch and do her business away from the shower area. She is likewise toilet trained outside, too. She has chosen one place on the balcony, next to the drain pipe as her toilet, the rest of the balcony remains clean. She never poops on her sleeper box if I have not put it away for the day yet, nor will she poop in her water baths. She has two 10 liter baths to use at her leisure in the hot summer, and a few bowls of water. She doesn't spill any of them.
Fig spends the workday hours alone on the balcony. My wife spends a bit of time chatting to her, or giving her treats. Mostly she keeps busy flying around, doing jumps, glides, bounds, occasional flips, and an assortment of playful crazy things. For example, she will fly up and kick the roof with both feet, or bound twice in a corner like Jackie Chan. Sometimes she crouches on the cement floor in the corner, then leaps in the air and glides onto her perch like a Ninja. Sometimes she leaps into the air and crashes down into her bath water over and over again with a big splash. She has an active imagination, and seems to be endlessly creative, and perfectly capable of entertaining herself for hours on end making up new fantasy games. She is plenty strong enough now to escape the balcony which is partially enclosed with a roof, but she stays. If I pushed her, she'd jump out into the wilds, but she seems to get that I'm telling her going off is not a great idea.
When I am on the balcony, I become the toy. She jumps on me every time I bend, squat or crouch, then off again when I stand up again. She likes to leap across the balcony using my leg or arm, or one of each. She comes and sits on my knee, or my shoulder, and fluffs herself up for a chat, or a preen, or a cuddle. If she is in the mood, and I signal her, she will walk down into my lap for a warm snuggle and a scratch. I have trained her to do this because I need to hold her to put on her detachable tethers to take her out for park visits. She comes in close, and I slip my hand under her sternum so her legs fold back, then very gingerly I rotate her onto her back to attach her tethers. She hates her tethers. She attacks them viciously, and I need to count my fingers, though she almost never bites me, not intentionally anyway. She has improved dramatically at putting on her tethers, and taking them off too. I do not think it gives her any stress to be tethered because we've done it so many times, but after I put them on, she is either temporarily angry about it, or so excited to go to the park, that she cannot contain herself, so she needs to be allowed to sit for ten minutes, tethers on, before going out, to calm back down. I thought I could train her to accept putting on tethers while standing still, but string and leather bits are her favorite toys, so she simply cannot resist tugging on them, and I am worried that if she hops aside with one tether on she could trip and fall, so the full control system works for Fig, but it is never going to be as easy as putting a leash onto a dog, unless I find a way to have much more time to work with her. Once the tethers are on her legs, I simply rotate her over back onto her feet very gingerly, then she knows I will count to three which is her cue to jump back to my knee, then off to her perch. She never flaps or panics. It's a clean operation, but it does involve trust, communication, and practice.
On walks Fig is well behaved and social. She rarely leaps from my arm without permission anymore, and permission consists of unwinding the tether rope, and letting her take off for a dash to find a perch. At the park she is like a kid. She can hardly contain excitement, like a dog. She runs all over the place, eventually visiting her favorite benches, fences, grassy spots, jungle gyms, and tree stumps. She enjoys being chased. She calls to other Crows some, but she is not obsessed with talking to them as she used to be; she just calls to announce herself. Sometimes they take an interest in her. Sometimes she'll attract a couple of interested friends. Sometimes a massive crowd of hundreds of Crows all circling and screaming at once. It depend on the season, the time of day,and the place. In fact, Fig is well enough behaved when the tether is wound now, that I have been taking her on the bicycle. If it is windy she opens her wings and crouches down and gets the sensation of flying quite satisfactorily, it seems. I keep it very slow because she would be badly injured if we were to crash. Not to mention drivers might crash at the spectacle of a huge bird with its wings spread open like an eagle on a bicycle appearing unexpectedly.
At the park Fig is not the least bit shy of anyone or anything. She will seek the close company of total, and very surprised strangers, leaping to perch right next to their heads. She will allow anyone to handle her, pet her, or come close for a chat. She even will prance through twenty screaming kids on a jungle gym if allowed. She will feed herself happily to a hungry dog, too. Only cats seem to get her a bit freaked. At home though, it is a different story. Unfamiliar people get her calling out anxiously. She won't alight on other people's arms, choosing instead to retreat to my shoulder. It is not that she is frightened, so much, rather she does not trust the quality of the person's character, you see, my son once withdrew his arm causing her to land on the ground. Now she thinks everyone is going to pull that trick on her. Fig NEVER, forgets a bad experience. On the balcony she has two main perches at either end, and a couple between. I once got creative with the central perches, and changed the support posts to fiberglass thinking it would be fun for Fig to have a softer landing, a bit of flex, a more natural tree limb like place to land. Well, the first time she landed on this new type of perch, it flexed nicely, and she jumped off, and it boinged around a bit, and she did not like the instability, and uncertainty of that one bit. That was seven months ago, and while I have changed that perch back to solid, rigid wood dowels almost immediately, and tried level hard to gently persuaded Fig to sit on it over and over again, she has since refused to alight on that perch ever again, choosing instead to fly over. I have attached trillions of snacks and toys to that perch which she does eat, and she even tears up the rope toys, and other things, but she manages to get at them from below, or from a side. She is permanently spooked of that perch. Nothing to do but remove it. Thankfully she is a bit more forgiving towards me when I have been a bit rushed, or clumsy, or rough in the past. Fig has taught me to have an incredibly gentle and patient bedside manner with her, and it has carried over to my interactions with people too. Silence is golden, especially with a Crow. I sat with her in the living room the other day. She is not allowed in the living room. Don't tell my wife; she wasn't there. Anyway, the unfamiliar place made her very very nervous. She almost could not stand it, but on my hand she feels secure. Then I had her sit on my knee a while, one step down in security, to test our trust, and strengthen it too. She really almost could not stand that too, but she soldiered on, eventually fluffing up and relaxing on my knee, though I could tell she was humoring me. Her true feeling was that she did not like an unfamiliar place one bit. When I finally returned her to her familiar perch in the shower room, she yelled at me, a good scolding. What the hell was that? Why exactly did you take me in the living room for an hour? You know I never go in the living room! But then I hold out my arm, and she pops on and comes to me for kisses. So, she can be forgiving, and she is trusting, and while she can get angry and emotional, she is willing to forget, but these things seem to be only available to living entities, not things like perches. Another example is my iphone. Fig enjoys watching videos of Crows and other things on the iphone. It gets her very excited, but now if I want to film her, or take a picture, I can't; whatever relaxed or cute behavior I want to capture quickly transitions into a screaming fit; I want to talk to the Crows in the phone! I unintentionally conditioned her to be super excited everytime she sees the phone, and now it has become hard to document her behavior, calls, and cuteness. Alas! I suppose I'll have to find my camera.
Fig still studies colors with me, though mostly to give her a chance to express herself vocally, which is obviously important if you are a bird. I have no intention of turning her into a circus act. But puzzles have become a big part of her usual routine. One day a week, at least, Fig will do as many puzzles as she can, and other days she'll enjoy one or two. I give her a variety of challenges involving ropes, string, chains, cups, hooks, mazes, and sticks. She has learned ten puzzles, and she enjoys figuring them out, and showing off that she can complete them quickly. After each puzzle she'll call out, there see, I did it, ah ha! She has a real and deep sense of accomplishment, and like with a human child, she expresses that to me. Of course food is her motivation, so I will usually do puzzles rather seriously on a Sunday morning for breakfast, when she is naturally hungriest. The fascinating thing about working with Fig is our interpersonal communication for me. She pays close attention to everything, my face, my gestures, my tone of voice. She can be instructed by waving, pointing, or just plain vocal encouragement. She fully understands yes, right, come on, try, and no, not that, wrong. And Fig understands now that if I am directing her to something, and encouraging her curiosity and effort, that there is a reason for my doing that, most likely food, and she gets on the task with focused intent to figure out what is up, continually looking to my feedback to know if what she is doing is hot or cold, as it where. One interesting thing is if I give Fig a new, or difficult puzzle, she will dismiss it immediately, even if she can clearly see, hey, there's a big chunk of food I might get! To take action, she relies heavily, perhaps completely on me to motivate her initial interest and continued tenacity. I imagine that young wild Crows orphaned from their parents would readily starve to death without the encouragement, and motivation they likely get from parents and older siblings to explore unknown things or tricky challenges. It is one reason I think Idaho Fish and Game's planned cull of 4,000 Raven parent birds is such a cruel idea, in addition to murdering thousands of our wildlife treasures which is vile. The children of those birds, numbering more than ten or twenty thousand birds will likely slowly starve to death without the parents continued home schooling, and motivational support, just as your own youngsters would probably starve if you left them at home unattended from a young age. Motivation, determination, persistence, tenacity...these are things social animals teach, and learn. As a teacher myself, I can tell you, the words try hard, work together, don't give up, you can do it, never give up, don't quit, are the phrases I say consistently to kids all day, everyday; I strongly suspect this is the case with Crows. Idaho, got your ears on?
In the afternoons Fig and I will go to the park, time permitting. She is more relaxed the following day if she gets out. She cannot go more than three days without a walk about under the sky. She may even be totally silent the day after an outing, like she is likely to be on a rainy day. She may be so satisfied that the following two days, she has no interest in going out again. But then she'll change her mind. I can tell if she wants to go by her reaction when I show her the tethers. If she wants to go out, she gets excited. If she doesn't she simply refuses to come put them on. She can be very naughty and a bit rebellious at the park. She wants to do her thing, but she is quite happy to sit together for an hour watching the clouds, birds, insects, and people. And I don't insist she perch on me the whole time. She almost always comes back to me without a chase, or any fuss, so that is good progress, and if danger presents, she knows I'm a safe place to go.
She comes in and enjoys an early dinner late afternoon. Dinner is lighter than breakfast. Then another quick shower to cool down, or warm up depending on the season. Then another face wash, and some short vocalizing, and maybe a puzzle or two. She absolutely needs social time to maintain her sanity. Unlike a cat or a dog, she cannot go ignored. If I ignore her, her anxiety the next day will double up. I'll come home and she'll be visibly anxious. So I stick to the routine. It only takes a little time to let her know, yes, you are loved. Yes, you have kinship. Yes, you matter. Everything is fine, normal, regular. Then she preens and relaxes, and the next day she isn't all wound up and out of sorts. If she's energetic after dinner and couldn't get to the park she goes out for an afternoon exercise session to burn off steam. Finally, she needs thirty minutes with the lights off before she will willingly hop into her sleeping box for the night. I think it is pretty amazing that she willingly jumps down to the ground, on a dark balcony, and goes into a dark box, with my reassurance. It moves me every time she does it because I know it requires incredible trust. Likewise in the mornings when I leave for work, I put her outside, but she sits on my knee by the door, and we share a few minutes when she gets quiet, and refuses to kiss my hand, or give me a stress feedback peck, or go out. She just sits there on my knee, saddly looking into my eyes, refusing for a few minutes to move. Do you have to go the work? she is asking. Can't we play just a little longer? No, I say, sorry love. Eventually, she jumps out to her perch. Turns to kiss my hand. Then dives into play, content in the fact that I will be coming home to see her in the afternoon. Then I take my other kid to school, and it's much the same. I'm a very lucky daddy.
Fig is not a pet. She is a wild animal. I try to remember that, and she often reminds me of the fact. I will continue to care for her, work on her relaxation, trust, confidence, nutrition, and happiness. I think Fig would enjoy doing education work in the future, but she has some ways to go before I can fully trust her handling in a classroom of youngsters. Plus, she will become sexually mature some time in the next year or two, and I suspect that will bring new surprises and challenges.
Anyway, that's my update for now.
