aarrrgg... all sailin' vessels need a parrot, matey!

We spent the weekend at the boat just fixing a few more things and doing more cleaning. We didn’t take her out, we just fiddle-farted around there in the slip. Since we weren’t going out, I thought it might be a good time to introduce Grace to Evolution.

Let me take a moment here to tell you about Grace. Gracie is our African Gray parrot. Like most highly intelligent parrots, Grays tend to be one person birds, meaning she loves me dearly, and is a poop to everyone else. She puts up with Bob because he isn’t intimidated by her, but if she can intimidate you - she will, and she uses it for all it’s worth. What all this means really is that when we take off to sail for long periods of time, we can’t leave Grace with a friend or family member, because everyone except us is afraid of her. So guess who else is going sailing!!!

Also, like most parrots, African Grays live to be about 70 years old. Gracie is currently about 6, so I’ve told my two daughters that when I finally kick the bucket, one of them is going to inherit her. They both stare at me wide eyed and say, "Not me!" So I can see it now,… at my funeral, as they slowly lower my casket into the ground, from inside there will be a little voice saying, "Hello? Hellooo? Good Morning! Hello???" And Lisa and Andrea will look at each other, smile, and shrug innocently.

Gracie has a huge vocabulary, can identify family members and pets by name, asks for what she wants, and let us know when she’s bored. She’s incredibly kicked back and very little seems to upset her. She has a great sense of humor and is overall content with life. She constantly reminds us that life is all about having a good time, as she swings from the ceiling of her cage by one foot, her wings all splayed out, and yells, "SUPERRRR CHICKENNN!!!"

She did fine at the boat. I didn’t take her travel cage because, even though it is much smaller than her home cage, it’s still pretty large. So she just rode on my shoulder or sat on her portable perch. She didn’t seem to mind being on the boat. The saloon is small enough that she probably just thought, "So this is a ‘people cage’, huh?" It did cloud up for a while, and got a little chilly. She shivered a bit, but did fine. We don’t have fuel in the little saloon stove, so we couldn’t heat it up for her. But it was still in the 60’s so I knew she wouldn’t freeze. She dealt with worse than that when we lived in the cabin up in the hills.

Grace has learned to enthusiastically call out ,"Ahoy, Mate!" But she needs to learn a lot more sailing phrases to become a REAL ship’s parrot.