It’s not all fun and tweeting

For Christmas, we got the budgies a new toy. It dispenses clean white paper in a long strip, so they can chew and shred it. Since they finished demolishing their Xmas tree last night, I put the new toy in the cage.

As soon as he got a good look at it, Chester went into a full scale panic attack. He was flying frantically back and forth, shedding feathers. Lola followed Chester’s lead and panicked too, though she clearly wasn’t sure what exactly she was supposed to be panicking about. I had to hurriedly take the toy back out and hide it away.

As soon as I opened the cage doors again, they both came out and demanded to sit on my shoulders in the office for comfort. Chester’s still a bit jumpy, and unfortunately unlike Lola he hasn’t worked out that I don’t like having my ear preened.

So, looks like I’ll have to introduce the new toy really gradually… Probably starting by hanging it up just outside the cage for a week or so for Chester to get used to it.