Rough Transition

Halle and I got to know each other slowly, but we had to learn some things all at once. For instance, my condo is near a parking lot where guys pick up their trucks in the morning and drop them off at night. They're generally good neighbors. But the guys would often wear hoodie sweatshirts. As a fashion statement, I see this as a pretty normal thing. But Halle, upon seeing them going about their business would let out a huge scream, and I mean smoke detector-loud scream, and not stop until I'd shut the blinds or otherwise taken her away from the sight of them. This was very distressing until I figured out she was scared of guys in hoodies because she'd been tormented by guys in hoodies in her original home. Then it was heartbreaking and put me in a rage. But the problem remained. One day when she'd seen a hoodie-wearing, scary man outside, I parked myself in between them and told her very clearly that she was safe, and that these guys couldn't come in, that this was Halle's house. I may have said it a couple of times, since she was screaming. And then from her stretched-to-full-height, shrieking posture and volume, she fluffed out her feathers, hunkered down on my hand and stopped yelling. It was that simple. You are safe, they can't come in, and this is your house.

Another thing the tipped me off that Halle might have been abused was the fact that when I offered her a spoonful of applesauce or yogurt, she'd LUNGE at the spoon, pushing it away with all her tiny strength. She didn't have the same reaction to forks or knives. Spoons were for drugs. Again, heartbreaking and cause for rage. It took weeks if not months before she came to trust that a spoon was just a spoon, and that it might contain a treat, if she played her cards right.

One last sad thing. When she first came to live with me, Halle had nightmares. She'd squawk (not as loudly as at the hoodie guys, but enough to wake me up) and flap her wings, sometimes flapping down to the bottom of the cage during the night. This went on for quite a long time. It wasn't because she was in a strange place, since she was in the same big cage she'd arrived in, and I left the only toy she had right next to her swing perch. She'd clearly bonded with it, snuggling up to it like a friend. She chose the swing with its familiar toy even though she now had new toys and places to perch. No, she had night terrors. She remembered bad things, and they populated her dreams. 

I'm happy to report that guys in hoodies no longer scare her, yogurt and applesauce are tasty, unthreatening treats, and my little dear sleeps through the night.