Most people are familiar with the old Will Rogers axiom: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. The parrot equivalent should be: When you find yourself on a perch, stop chewing. Our Ruby macaw Mr. Cracker is a portable woodchipper. He loves to chew. At least once, that we know of, he's chewed through his perch. While he was sitting on it. You'd think he'd learn. But the experience hasn't stopped him from chewing through his perches.
To make our life easier, we decided to start using two by twos for Mr. Cracker's perches. They fit his big feet perfectly. We started with pine. Big mistake. That lasted about two days. So we switched to fir. Much harder wood. Much harder for Mr. Cracker to chew through his perch. Not that it stopped Mr. Cracker from trying to chew through his perch. He just had to work at it harder. The perches last longer. We're talking weeks instead of days. We try to catch the perch before he manages to chew through it. And switch it out with a new one. Not horribly expensive. And the old perch gets sawed up for chew toys.
And we keep hoping that some day Mr. Cracker will stop trying to chew through his perch and focus on chewing his chew toys instead. We can always dream.
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