Baubo is as good as she can be. That simple. She is not trained and nearly wild, so she is going to act a bit wild. She shouldn't be in captivity, even though she was hatched by a breeder. And supposedly hand fed. (Hand feeding is supposed to make a bird socialized to humans) It’s too late now. She would never make it on her own. Not without some kind of therapy to introduce her back into the wild. She doesn’t even fly, and spends much of her summer day outside with me. Captivity just goes against her instinctual sensibilities.
I love having her
around. She is fun to hang in the kitchen with and enjoys taste testing my
cooking. I think she likes me, maybe even loves me, but I don’t think she is
completely as happy as she could be. And that would be because she is captive. Our
house is a good sized place, but small for her. Cockatoos naturally have larger
territories that they occupy. Miles and miles of air space and tree/ground dominion.
Even when she
throws a fit, it’s usually for a reason. She is either hungry, alone, or
scared. As soon as one of those three situations a rectified she becomes
content again. Her fits are loud and part of her nature. A cockatoo needs to
blow off some steam and that is usually accomplished by screaming. It can be a
happy play scream, or a dysfunctional rage scream, but she needs to do it a
couple times a day. Which blows my mind that the breeder first sold her to a
couple living in an apartment building! That is how she wound up at the
wildlife refuge. To loud for the apartment.
In our big house
with plenty of space away from our neighbors she is free to cut loose. And does
often…
