cml wrote:Pajarita, I just cant get my head around you! I KNOW that you have lots of knowledge about parrot keeping and you keep saying that you want to help parrots. Yet you act with such disdain and utter disregard of respect towards people that you end up not helping most parrots. People will NOT listen to you when you act in your current manner, only a few does and I would want more parrots to benefit from your experience.
I think the best thing you can do to help more parrots, time investment wise, would be is to work on your interpersonal skills because they are what will help the most amount of birds in the long run since a forum is a communication platform.
Can you imagine using all the years you've learned about parrots, sharing that knowledge with maybe five times as many people who actually listen to you? It's possible, but it isnt happening now. Most people you "help" now just leave and their parrots arent any better of. Take a moment and be completely honest with yourself and think this through. Please, if not for your sake (I know you could not care less) then for the parrots which you claim to want to do anything for.
CML, I don't know why you can't 'get your head around me'. I am a very easy person to understand because I am honest to a fault - and this should be taken literally and not as an idiom. I've always been like that and at 60 years of age, I don't think change is likely. I love animals. I think they are better than people, nobler and easier to understand. I am very gentle and patient to them, children, old, sick and handicapped people. I am not patient with adults. I don't think it's necessary. I don't hurt them on purpose and I would help them if I could and they needed it but I will call it as I see it and will not go out of my way to stroke your ego so you would like me and listen to me. I think if you need me to do this in order to heed good information you solicited in the first place, there is something wrong with you. People should listen to good information because it's accurate and it will help to make their bird's life better and not because they like the person who gives it. What kind of stupid, useless criterion is that? Besides, it's a fact that the people who tell you what you want to hear are NOT the ones imparting good info! If you have a problem, I will give you whatever information/help I can. I you don't agree with me, you are welcome to disagree and debate the subject with me. Most people who do, find that I have based it on hard scientific facts and not what somebody said on a forum (I sometimes base the info on my own personal experience but I say it so it's not confused with science). You, yourself, know this is true because we have had arguments where you have accused me of putting out personal theories as science and I have proven to you that this is not so (remember the twilight argument?). I don't attack anybody personally, I don't insult them, I don't disrespect them, I don't call them names, I don't use profanity and I try to explain as well as I can why I say the things I say, I give links when I am able and copy or paraphrase the source when I can't - but I am not going to tell you 'You are a good parront' if I don't think that you are doing EVERYTHING in your power to be one just so you don't feel 'attacked' or 'belittled'. I tell my grandchildren their drawing is beautiful even if the little sticks don't even resemble a man but adults should not need this, for heaven's sake! If you are going to take umbrage to somebody making you feel inadequate in your husbandry because they point out you are doing something wrong, don't have parrots because that is our life: knowing that what we do is not enough and constantly worrying, tweaking, changing, researching in our eternal quest and strife to make their lives better. The number one requirement to been a good one IS acknowledging inadequacy. It's not easy to get used to the idea that the animals we keep and love are suffering and some people just don't want to accept it. I understand why they feel this way but I don't think it excuses them. I don't care if you don't like it and don't want to hear it, it is what it is. But there is no disdain on my part, if there was, I would consider people who post here not worthy of my answering them (and Lord knows I have enough to do what with my dogs, cats, birds, husband, children, stepchildren, sons and daughters in law, grandchildren, etc -sheesh, I even keep in touch with ex husbands and ex in laws on top of friends) but I always do - and I seriously doubt you can actually point to a posting of mine where I have shown it. I do get terribly impatient with adult people that having given the right information and avowing love for their bird do not really consider it or do it halfway because some Tom, Dick or Harry on the net told them differently and their 'method' is easier, or because they choose to take the 'ostrich' approach to parrot keeping: if I say I don't believe in it, it doesn't. And this is not because I think that Tom, Dick or Harry are not as 'good' as me but because their opinions are just that: opinions and not facts. Parrot keeping is NOT a matter of opinion, it's a matter of what Nature evolved them to need. Not my rules, Mother Nature's rules. But people would argue about them as if they had any authority on the subject and come up with notions that are completely opposed to reality! How can you possibly argue that parrots alone do OK when Nature mandated they lived in a flock? When there are tests that tell us that parrots that live without other parrots (mind you, human company notwithstanding!) live with stress to the point that their lifespans are shortened? When you read in bird forums of pet parrots getting fungal infections which anybody who has done any research would know that the ONLY reason this happens is because of a depressed immune system from stress? If you don't believe me or find somebody saying a different thing, do your own research! Go to scientific studies, wildlife biologists projects and blogs, ornithologists papers, etc and, if you find research that contradicts what I say, post the link, I'll thank you for it and we can both dissect the new information and learn from it!
And let me tell you something else, if I thought for one second that stroking people's egos would result in bettering parrots lives, I would do it. But, in my personal experience and opinion, it doesn't. I've tried it. It does NOT work. Because an animal lover (the real kind) wants more than anything to learn all there is to learn in order to make his animals' lives better and he doesn't give a hoot if this information comes dry and rough and not softly wrapped up in pretty pink paper with a bow on top. The only people that do are the animal enjoyers and those will never care enough about their parrots to put them first. Mind you, most people are animal enjoyers and there are many types of pets that do very well with a conscientious animal enjoyer but not parrots. Parrots require you put them first and very few people are able or willing to do this because it's SUPER HARD and, if you do, you cannot have a normal life.
