Do goats and parrots have that fiesty independent attitude too?<<<
Do they ever, Dink left me bleeding most of the time, but loved me...well a little.
When Bill was able to go to work after his heart problems, he had to go out of town, that is where the jobs were, Dink never spoke a word from Sunday until Thursday, only bit me.
Considering that he did not live in a cage, that meant he could make a flying attack and draw blood on the run.
Then Bill came home for the weekend and poor sweet Dink would be there when he woke up, he would even preen the sleep from Bills long eye lashes.
Dink would find my cigarette package, pull them out one by one, take a bite out of the middle, drop it to the floor, turn his head sideways, look to make sure it was on the floor and reach for another.
It took me years to figure out when he knew to wake me up and you had better be feet on the floor when that alarm went off.
Then one morning, I was awake and I heard it, the alarm made a click, before it started ringing and that was Dink’s clue.
Jo had told me that she thought that I should take him, for he was lonely at her house, Jim was a cop and she worked at the bank, so they were gone for long hours, and there was always something in my house, and I was raising/breeding birds.
Finally one day, she said please follow me home and get Dink, she had him for 2 or 3 years, he was an illegal immigrant, came across at a day or two old and the arresting officer, asked Jo to try and save for in the 1970’s we had no one to take care of the smuggled birds in our area.
I had no idea what I was going after, got there, found a small parrot, a Petz Conure, who LOL, had a 6 foot tall cage.
We got the cage loaded and Dink in a carry cage and started home, of course to the far side of town.
It was late and Bill was still in the goat pen, for that was the day one choose to have a difficult birth, which Bill was good at dealing with.
We set up the cage and went to bed.
Bill got up early and did not like my chattering, for they said that I hit the floor talking and it was more jobs for Bill, if he listened.
So over the years, we settled into married life, he got up alone in the morning, did not want food or talk.
I stayed up at night and did crafts, read or whatever and even when we had a house full of foster kids, we both had periods of being alone.
The first morning with Dink went like this:
“I am putting my pants on damn it”
repeated several times, as Bill stood by the bed, attempting to put his pants on and talk at the same time.
LOL, of course I woke up and asked what was going on, then I heard Dink, in the other room yelling “WHAT ARE YOU DOING???” over and over.
Seems Bill went to start the coffee and woke Dink up, who considered him to be an intruder.
I thought it was funny, Bill did not.
When I got up and went in the kitchen, Dink started in on me,
“I Want a Bath!!!”, I want a bath, over and over, with more cuss words as he rejected my efforts to put bowls of water in his cage.
When I got to work and told Jim, he said Jo forgot to give me the bathtub.... an 8 inch round cake pan, to be placed in the sink and a trickle of water allowed to run, so Dink could shower, himself and the entire kitchen.
In later years, he took a shower on my shoulder, most of the time...for he got in the habit of wanting a bath in every glass of water and as you watered house plants.
I had a list of 139 words that he could say and did when he wanted to, that were used correctly.
He would scream at me, I was the evil stepmother, I did not allow him to drink beer and none of the cans that I opened, ever had beer in them.
My brother had allowed Dink to share a beer and forever after Dink wanted beer in every can.
Mary would come to dinner and he would set on her knees and talk to her, as if he knew he was talking to a real victorian lady.
But let Bill’s boss’s wife come to dinner and Dink was plain rude, he would mock what she said and she was one of those, who bragged a lot, how dink knew which words to repeat, I did not figure out, but he would pick her brags up and sit there repeating them.
Dink was with me about 24 years.