I am exhausted. I just had a half-hour-long argument with my parrot which, much like an argument with a toddler, mostly consisted of me sternly repeating ‘No!’ and her flailing and making incoherent screeching noises that meant ‘BUT I WANNA.’
What she wanted was to sit on my shoulder, and also to bite me whenever I did something she disagreed with. Every time I put her back on her cage, she climbed back down and followed me around so I had to pick her up again. She is now in Time Out, and I am taking headache medicine.
This is the thing that separates parrots from small children: you’re allowed to put a parrot in a cage when it’s being a brat.