Parakeet not happy about locks on cage

Resentment is obvious in Simon’s tiny brown eyes every morning.

The green Quaker Parakeet grasps that the luggage-sized padlocks that keep the doors and hatches closed are designed to keep him in, and he loathes them for it.

The morning routine is always the same. Simon chirps me awake while our roommate, Catherine, gets ready for work during the hour before I wish to get up. Then I stumble into his room and use the key kept near his table to pop the padlocks on his cage.

Once I made the mistake of leaving one of the locks with the key still inside on Simon’s table.

The key disappeared. The padlock was on the floor. I had to buy new locks.

Each morning I clean and refill Simon’s food and water dishes while he climbs into the plastic tub that holds his food and frantically grabs all the dried bananas and peppers out of the mixture. He throws the food around, and then squawks at me when I tell him it’s time to go back to his room.

He complies, but when the door shuts and I start to put the locks on, the protest begins. He strikes at the locks like a little viper before tugging frantically at them.

I wouldn’t need such cage security, if he hadn’t been so smart.

When Simon first came to live with me, he never demonstrated knowledge of opening doors. Then months into our living arrangement, he began pulling the door open with his beak and dropping it repeatedly.

That was around the same time he started splashing his water from his bowl in an apparent attempt to make it light enough to turn on its side to wedge the door open.

I noticed he wouldn’t sacrifice his food in the same manner, and the resulting mess involved the stench of soggy Cheerios and a sneezing, soaking wet bird.

That’s when his doors got held shut with spring-loaded clips. It worked for a while until one night, I came home from work and found him in the cage of one of my other birds.

Tessa, the cockatiel, who died just a month later, was standing in the back of her cage, glaring at Simon while he wallowed in her food dish.

Another day, Simon met me in the living room.

The two of us stopped and stared at each other for a long moment. Simon broke the silence first.

“I’m a good boy?” he asked, staring up at me with one eye.

“Apparently not,” I replied.

I asked Simon’s veterinarian what would keep the little man in while I was away; her solution was padlocks.

She told me she had never met a bird that was able to get the key and unlock a padlock from inside the cage.

If Simon ever figured that out, I told her, we’d start hitting the television circuit. Maybe together we could earn enough money for a luxury pad for Simon and a few new things for me.

Too bad the only thing he’s figured out is how to hide keys.