Of Late...

Recent news:

I have not posted in some time. Just been busy. Fig is doing very well though. Keeping her fed, watered, bathed, emotionally happy, and with healthy feet requires a tremendous amount of consistent dedication. Food, water, and baths are routine for me now. Fig baths herself, of course, but she insists that I bath her too. Bathing is apparently a collective, social affair with Crows.

Recently, I am learning the most about Fig’s emotional, and psychological needs which are quite demanding as well. She is approaching 3-years of age, and is definitely going through the middle stages of bird puberty. She sings romantically to me as always, and proclaims her love in English, and in Crow language never ending in the usual ways, but most recently she has started doing a more serious mating dance as well. She squats down and vibrates her tail wildly, getting all blinky eyed and sultry. She is obviously heating things up, but I know from experience with other birds, that things are going to get much steamier as time goes on. Thankfully winter is on the way, so she ought to chill out for a few months. Next Spring will be a hot-spring of hormones, and begging displays for sure. As long as she doesn’t tear the house apart to make a nest it shouldn’t be too much of a bother because this new mating dance routine is virtually silent.

 

Fig’s emotional bond with me continues to deepen, and enrich. She enjoys lap cuddles, hugs, being carried around, sleeping in an embrace upside down, sideways, or lounging on one arm on her stomach, watching TV on my knee, pets, strokes, leg massages, scratches, gentle touches to her face, face washes, preening, and even long kisses on the neck or head. Any feeling of danger of her gauging out my eyeballs that I may have felt in intimate proximity with her two years ago has long since vanished from my silly mind. Her (probably unnatural) affinity for lots of intimate affection continues to develop and grow. This is a very slow process, and I am curious to see how far she will progress in learning, and appreciating “human” affection. The only time Fig ever shows any “aggression” is when she is sleepy, she gets a bit growly if she wants to bed down without being disturbed, but even this bedtime grouchiness is almost totally gone. She enjoys kisses, and soft pets even when she is dropping off, these days. As a passage bird, she came to me fully fledged, and even though I got her the very day she left the nest, at four-six weeks of age, she was by then hardwired to be a very independent individual making her way in the world, and she still displays this character; it keeps her safe because her mentality is very much to look out for herself, but more and more, she bonds with me, and it shows in little progressions in every environment. She sits with me in the living room, no longer dashing around playfully anymore, except very rarely. If she falls off my knee, or hand, her immediate reaction is to jump right back to me now, rather than hopping all around in a panic before finding a chair. She stays very close at the park too, and while she will lead me around from fence post to fence post, bench to tree, she never makes any attempt to “fly away”. I let her have her freedom, though I keep a long tether attached to her ankles in case a dog or cat shows up, or a hawk, or she decides to go investigating and mapping her surroundings which is very much her instinct and right to do. She understands if I pull the tether gently, that that means she has reached the invisible perimeter beyond which Dad simply does not feel comfortable because of cars, or cyclists, or some danger which she trusts me to alert her to. I let her have as much freedom as I can, and try not to stifle her, sitting together, much like a pair of birds would do, non-challantly. She is, aside from her emotional attachment to me, and a long unanchored tether, a free and wild bird when we go out. The tether continues to get shorter over time, but very, very incrementally, as Fig occasionally gets up to the most rambunctious bits of mischief which sometimes pose the risk of serious danger to her. I suspect I will have her fully untethered in another two or three years at the rate that she is maturing, and “obeying”.  Right now, she still has the ability to act very much like a three year old child when she has a mind to. One simply does not expect to have to wait for a bird to grow up somehow, but that is exactly what I find myself doing. So, it is a long, patient parenting process, but like parenting human children, the rewards are priceless and never stop coming. More than her “mate”, more than my pet, or “child” though, my true feeling which I think Fig shares, is that we are friends, and I will never let her down.