Odie the Love Muffin

We went through a period of my lovebird Odie being a little terror. Actually we've gone through a few periods. We went through a "terrible twos" stage where he was just over-stimulated and wouldn't settle down. Most recently his hormones were charged by the addition of something to his cage that sparked his nesting instincts, causing him to become aggressive towards me. (I say "he", but I really don't know. Odie could be a female.) I made some changes to his cage, and now (after working on our relationship for the last couple of months)he is back to his normal sweet self.

I've been taking Odie to work everyday for the last week or two. We are currently "cat-sitting" for a family friend, and the cat Midnight stays on the porch during the day while I'm at work. I don't trust her with Odie (since she hasn't been raised around birds like my cats). So I take Odie to work. Here are a couple of videos of Odie at work. He spends hours out of his cage with me, sitting on my shoulder or running around on my hands or in my lap.



And he loves to have his head scratched, and will even insert himself into my hand to be pet and scratched.



He also trusts me enough now to allow me to put him on his back. He even does this on his own, flipping upside down and laying there while he nibbles my fingers.



He's my sweet boy. And now he's taken to trying to mimic my whistle that I do all of the time (he already mimics my "kissing" sound). Lovebirds are not known for being mimics, and don't usually speak, but can be good at mimicking sounds. My last lovebird did a perfect rendition of the beep of a low battery in a smoke alarm, and he could mimic the cordless phone ring so well that we would actually answer the phone when he did it before we would realize it was him. So I guess a whistle might be a similar situation. So perhaps some day Odie might do our special whistle. He's my boy.