Affronted cockatoo doesn’t want to go to vet, unleashes stream of invective

February 26, 2015 • 11:55 am

According to the YouTube notes, this bird is pissed off:

Max knows when he sees his carrier that it’s a visit to the vet and gets pretty vocal about it.

Can anybody make out what Max is saying? He sounds like the Bird from Hell—the Exorcist Bird.  “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?”

33 thoughts on “Affronted cockatoo doesn’t want to go to vet, unleashes stream of invective

    1. Well, we too are wimpy and take our d*g to the groomer for the nails. It is just too much drama (and a little scary) for us to do it ourselves.

    2. I used to trim my cockatiel’s nails, and I’d wrap him in a bath towel to restrain him for the procedure. Any lingering doubts about avian ancestry and evolution were soon dispelled by the hissing, striking, and guttural noises emanating from the Enraged Bird Wrap. After he was released in the room to fly around, he’d usually make a few sallies at my head to pull my hair.

      I imagine my strategy would be much more frightening with a large cockatoo.

      1. It has to be a regular procedure performed throughout their lives. Once they accept it as normal, they don’t fight at all. The same goes for dogs and cats. However, it has to be something that is done regularly and consistently, you can’t just spring it on them one day and expect them to be calm.

        1. The cockatiel was an adult bird and not tame when I got him, and I suppose I didn’t have the confidence to try trimming his nails myself in the first year or so. I used the towel wrap restraint method about once or twice a year to trim his nails, after being shown the procedure by the vet technician, but he never accepted it calmly.

          Nail trimming is a much easier process with my d*gs – I was told to pick up and massage their paws regularly, by a trainer for their puppy obedience classes. That certainly acclimated them to having their paws handled for nail-trimming.

          1. There’s a reason that people ought to buy only hand-reared birds and continually keep in physical contact with them so that they retain that tame quality.

            You can also get rough perches in his cage, or sandpaper coverings for the existing perches, and he’ll wear down his own claws without having to be trimmed.

  1. In the cupboard he sounded like he needed one of Frankie’s exorcists, as you said. For a bit under the table I thought he sounded like a child saying, “take it away”. Apart from that, I got nothing.

    1. You also have to remember, they weren’t trying very hard, they were trying to film something to post on YouTube. I could have had that bird in the carrier in 30 seconds flat.

  2. I am offended by the bird’s desultory philippic. Was the owner cockatood into submission? Unfortunately, the video clip stops to soon to reveal how it all ended.

  3. …And that is why Orson’s carrier is always out. No need to tip him off by taking it out of the closet. Then again, he doesn’t have a bolt cutter on his face.

  4. It’s crazy when he goes all T-Rex at the 1:25 mark, flexing his chest and leg muscles. That squat/head thrust looks wicked. Poor scared birdie, though.

  5. The cockatoo Max seems to speek his version of human:
    0:31: ‘I did say’
    After that his human says: ‘don’t say words like that’
    and Max says: ‘I say yes’
    Around there Max seems just to repeat human sounds.
    The interesting part is rond 1:30 where Max is very agitated. He clearly says ‘Take it away take it away ????? take it away’ he might even say ‘I won’t’

    1. I thought I heard that, as well as ‘no wanna go vet’ or ‘gotta go vet’. It’s a lot of gibberish, but in his other videos, he has a lovely way of saying, ‘Haaiii!’

    2. 0:03 “I don’t wanna trim my nails”
      1:16 “it’s not fair, it’s derogatory, it’s no fun”
      1:31 “I’M SO TIRED OF THIS! I’M NOT A WUS, I’M NOT, I’M NOT!”

  6. I thought he was saying “sonofabitch” at first, but I could be wrong. Then it sounded like a woman’s voice, so I suspect this guy has recently gone through a nasty relationship breakdown!

  7. The unsettling part of watching this was how the bird seemed to be matching the intensity of its “speech” with the intensity of its physical responses, as if both were reflecting its changing emotional state. When it was shouting (what I heard as) “fuck this”, it really looked ready to throw a punch…

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