Information Echo

Those who know us also know that we have a parrot - an Umbrella Cockatoo, to be exact.

We love him a lot, even though he’s a bit of a character sometimes, and always trying to shred just about anything within reach, short of us. We laughingly describe him as a “Chainsaw with legs”, but it is sometimes a little to close to the truth.

On Thursday we were somewhat surprised to come home and see him sitting on the roof of his cage. Somehow the flap on one side of his cage (that his food and water bowls swing in and out of) had gotten opened and he had apparently happily crawled out to freedom.

I don’t quite know how this happened since the locks are very foolproof, but I think I might have been the creator of my own demise - I must not have locked it correctly when I changed his water in the morning before heading out to work. He’s never gotten out of his cage before, nor has he done it since.

So, after seeing him on top of his cage, my heart skips a beat. My first thought is “what did he destroy?”.

Terrified, I inspect our large HDTV. Nothing notable, which is surprising, since when he is on the top of his cage he usually fixates on walking over to the TV and crawling along the edge of it - something I immediately discourage for obvious reasons.

I spin around and look into the dining room, half expecting to see the legs of our wooden table and chairs shredded to bits.

Nothing.

I stroll into the Kitchen and expect to see the baseboards pulled off and the cupboard doors and fridge trim panels shredded.

Nothing.

Front hall…nothing.

Stairs and banisters, untouched. The fishtank stand, hall tree…all fine.

Back into the living room I glance at our Mac laptop which happened to be left open that morning.

I never normally leave it open when leaving for work, but since it had been running a fairly long backup I had made an exception that day.

And yes, you guessed it.

There’s a variety of keys from the keyboard laying on the couch and floor, with various bits of electronics from the underlying buttons also spread around the area.

(No, it’s not dirty - it suffers from the notorious Macbook staining issue…)

He has also chomped on the special Magsafe power cord and completely severed it.

Thankfully an inspection of the LCD and the rest of the machine showed no damage.

As if the laptop wasn’t bad enough, he also pulled a few buttons off of our touchscreen learning remote. It still works, but if you flip it upside down a few of the buttons now depart the remote.

I’m was temped to scream, but all in all, its only a few hundred dollars of damage. Compared to the carnage we could have discovered, its not bad.

But I’m pissed none the less.

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