 Hello, my name is Marlene McCohen and I am here today with my African Grey Cody. Cody, you want to say hi? Come here Cody. Here's Cody. Today's a really good day for Cody because today's Storytime Sunday is going to be about Cody himself. Except, I don't know why I decided to do this in the bathroom today like I used to. It's because the sunlight is really exciting but I forgot that Cody is obsessed in here and he cannot stay still and he wants to play with everything so he's kind of angry right now. I'm like, Cody, this story is about you. What are you doing? I even brought his toys over thinking I would entice him to stay but he just wants to go around and cause lots of trouble in here. So that's going to make it a little bit hard today. Did you hear him laugh? He just laughed. No, you need to come over here right now. Well, well, well. I had to bribe him with a Q-tip. I don't know how long this will last, probably not long but he hasn't seen one in a while so I'm really hoping that it will give me a solid minute. Oh, never mind. Here's a bunch of things. Here's about you, silly. Ooh. Did you guys hear that? He's like, ooh. This is your first story. This is not entirely Cody's first story. In fact, Cody's entire story is up on YouTube in case you haven't heard about Cody and don't know how I got him. I got Cody after I started my channel so before I even went to get Cody, I sat in my car and I said, guys, I'm about to go get a bird. I don't know what I'm going to do. If you guys are interested in watching that, check out the Cody files. It's a playlist on my YouTube channel. You'll find out everything there is to know about me getting Cody. Cody has a miraculous story pertaining to me specifically. That story, I told you guys, it was the first official story about Cody. I had been hesitating revealing this story to you guys and then I finally did it with the true unbelievable story of Cody. That's really important to this story just because if you've watched that video, you know in a nutshell that I kind of believe that Cody is the reincarnation of my bird George except Cody was alive already when George died. So it's not like he can completely be the reincarnation. But if you watch the story, you'll know what I'm talking about. Now, before I get into that now, he just said, you're so cute, like, oh, my crying is cute. He's just going to go on and do what he wants to do. Welcome to owning a bird. Oh, did you think it was going to be so cute and innocent and you were going to be Cinderella all day? No, you're going to be chasing them all around while they do not eat things. You should see him. He's he's skipping and hopping right along the bathtub right now. He's so cute. You're so cute. Come show everyone how cute you are. No. Look, I'll let you sit on my head. You want to sit on my head? You sit on my head and stay there. You want to stay there and we'll tell the story? Do you want to stay there and I'll tell the story? I'm having no luck today. He's looking in the mirror. He looks in the mirror and he said, oh, oh, do you want to bring that over here? Okay, you can keep this. I think I found something exciting to entice him. Here's some things that here's some things that I forgot to tell you guys about Cody in that last video that kind of just add to the story. But before we get to some cute little Cody facts, let's choose the Engaged Knot Cage Star of the Day. Are you guys ready? Today we chose Archie the Cockatoo. Guys, if you haven't checked out this Instagram, this cockatoo is so cute. It's a rescue. It's adorable. You really need to check Archie out. I think you guys will really enjoy Archie. Look how cute Archie is and Archie has so many photos. It's just like Archie's face just steals the show. Speaking of stealing the show, it's like Cody does not want to be here right now. Cody's toys are all in here and he loves it in here and wants to just chase his toys and fly around and see how bossy he is. He's so funny. Oh my God, I love him. He's so cute. So go follow Archie the Cockatoo on Instagram. Archie's page is new, but it is not lacking in cuteness. That's for sure. For those of you who watch my channel regularly and you know the true unbelievable story of Cody, I'm going to start this story off by telling you some other things that I forgot to tell you in this video. First of all, Cody follows me everywhere around the house. I mean, so does Picasso and my other birds, but with Cody, it's absolutely different. He is not proving my point right now. He wants nothing to do with me right now. Anyway, we'll give Cody a little bit of a break. Cody follows me everywhere in this house. He follows me kind of like a desperate bird. It's different than the way the other birds follow me. Cody follows me with like a panic that he's not going to see me again, which is really interesting because when George died, my previous African gray, I was out of town. So it's just a little bit weird that he has this desperation to follow me. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. He works really hard to find me around the house. In fact, I flight train him sometimes by pretending that I'm going to move fast. Whenever I move fast, he follows me like crazy. So it always feels a little more desperate and with a lot more purpose than any of the other birds flying to me. The other birds have a different kind of confidence. They're flying to me comes from I want to be with you now. Cody's comes from an intense fear and you can just sense it. Now here's another weird thing about Cody. After George died, George the human painted a picture, which you guys probably have seen often in my videos, maybe in my movies. It's a picture of George. It was his first painting ever and he didn't even have a picture of George in front of him. He just painted it. And this painting is at the entrance of my house. If you're really curious about it, watch my movie Sniffers. The painting is in the background almost the entire time. Cody, for whatever reason, continuously flies and lands on this painting. It's as if he thinks it's his perch. He doesn't want to be on any other bird stand. He has his own stand. He doesn't want to stand on it. He continuously flies and stands on this painting. It's like creepy. If he won't stand on the painting, he stands on the bottom of the easel and just like goes next to it and perches next to it all the time. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I get what you're trying to tell me. You don't need to fly to this painting all the time. If you look around my house or any other house, there's so many other options for perches, including the actual perches and bird stands. But Cody doesn't want to be on those. He wants to be on the George painting. If you follow me on Instagram, I post that in my story all the time, him just landing there. Because I think it's pretty impressive. Oh, you're eating my shoe? Cody gets really territorial over this whole bathroom because when I first got him, I wanted to bond with him. So I kept him in the upstairs bird cage next to me and then we would hang out in the bathroom in the morning while I got dressed, while I put my makeup on, I brought his toys in here. So he gets really territorial in here and really crazy in here. But the reason I would film videos in here is because my other birds could stand on the shower and on the faucet and it was a lot easier for me to make a video in here while having all of the other birds with me. Because I don't want to leave any birds alone. I want all my birds to be engaged all of the time. Now, speaking of being engaged, this is what happened. Here is the Cody story. It's not exactly a funny story, but it's just fascinating to me. I was editing a video. Maybe it was a story time Sunday. Maybe it was a parent tip Tuesday. Either way, I knew I needed an hour or two of focus to just sit there and edit this video. Usually, as you will see in my Instagram story, I sit down and start editing and starts walking over Jersey and starts flying over Picasso. And before you know it, I can't see the screen and I'm editing around their little heads and trying to like position them so that I can get the best sniff. And then Cody will walk over and be on my lap and then Vinny will come over. This particular day, I didn't really have that kind of time. I knew that I needed to give it a lot of focus. So the birds were all somewhere else. I think Picasso and Jersey were with Jenna, Rocky was with George, and Cody was in his cage looking at me. I was sitting on the couch doing my editing from the laptop and I'm looking at Cody and he's looking at me. And I'm trying to hurry because all I want to do is finish this and get him out of the cage and hang out with my bird. I mean, there's nothing more exciting than sitting around, hanging out, playing games with your parrot, right? I don't want to be editing, let's be honest, but I do want to get through it and make sure that it's done. But for whatever reason, I had a lot of specific thoughts about Cody that day. So I'm sitting there and I'm editing. Cody is probably about 20 feet away in his cage looking at me. Cody watches me all day intently so he's looking at me and normally I'd be like, okay, he's in his cage, I'll take him out, we'll have fun in an hour. But on this day, I felt like, why is he in his cage? I just want to be with him. He's a bird in a cage. I want my bird to be engaged and not caged, but I can't have him on a perch because what he does is he flies away from the perch and flies on that painting or flies on the couch and I know he could chew up the couch. So I just need to get this done like one more half hour and I'll be done and then he can be out. Otherwise I'll have to keep getting up and chasing him around and getting up and chasing him around. You guys don't even know how long it takes to put into these videos versus how much time you guys probably do know. It takes to be engaged with your birds all day. So I'm trying to get done just so that I can be with my bird and give him the attention he needs. But I can't focus because all I can do is focus on him. And it was like I was lost in very deep thought. I'm on the computer and I'm just looking at him and I'm like, he wants to be with me right now. And I know logically I can't have him right now this minute that happens but I can't wait to get him out. And I start thinking about him as George and I'm like, he didn't come all the way back to me for him to be sitting there watching me. He needs to be with me. And I'm just having all these deep thoughts and like, are you George? Are you like everything makes sense for you to be? Sometimes I look at my birds deeply and I think, what are you doing in Los Angeles? Like really, you should be in the jungle somewhere. You know, it's just fascinating that these birds live in my house. Hey, what are you doing? So it was just a very deep thought like that. It's like you came all the way back to me and you're trying to tell me you're you or even if you're not, even if you're just Cody, I love you so much. Like I just want to be with you right now. And he's looking at me like he's agreeing with me. Like he's kind of far away, but I could tell that he is like giving me some like telepathic messages. I'm not kidding with you. It's like, have you ever looked at your dog or any other animal and you're like, I know that they're understanding me right now. That's what it was like with me and him. Like I'm far away and I can sense that he's feeling my messages. He's feeling like I want to be with him, but he's understanding that even if I got up right now and figured out being with him, I'm getting up, I'm aborting, I'm not going to be back in the mojo so easily. And it's like I want him to understand that, but I want to be with him so bad. And I'm thinking like so deeply about this George, Cody thing. And I'm like, if you are George, you've totally entered into a whole new situation that you weren't in before. I mean, we're in a new house. You are not in the number one bird right now. Cody is now fifth on the pecking order, but George was like number one. Life must be so different. And I'm thinking to myself, if you were George, shouldn't I treat you like you're George? But you're Cody. I can't do that to Cody, but Cody deserves the love that George got. But Cody has stolen my heart. You guys don't even know. He gets all the love in the world. It's like driving home. I'm excited to see Cody. He's given me that love back and that excitement to wake up in the morning. That's just what he's done for me because an African gray was so absent from my life. Anyway, I'm sitting there. And suddenly I notice that the bowl in his cage, which is latched from the outside, has opened. He's opened the latch of the bowl. He's pushed the bowl open. So now there's a hole. He's squeezed himself out of the little bowl hole, okay? And he has come on top of his cage. It's like he could have done that the whole time, but he didn't because he knew I was doing something and very focused. Two seconds later, he flies over to me and lands right on my hands. It's not a funny story, but it's amazing. It's like I'm looking at him and what it is about it, feel this with me here, is that he thought to himself, I'm not holding a grudge that she's not taking me out. I'll just go to her. She needs me to go to her. She can't get up. She's working on something. I'm not saying he had all those specific thoughts. I mean, but just in a way, it was like, he said I want to take care of this myself and he flew over to me. But what's fascinating about it was, he wasn't sitting there playing with the bowl for like five, 10 minutes trying to figure it out. He knew. He knew all along. He just thought this is a good time to use it. And usually when birds do things like this, they hide it from you. They hide from you that they know how to get out. They kind of, you come home, you find that they got loose and then you figure out how they did it. I think I had seen him one time before do it when the bowl wasn't in there. So that's why I put the bowl in so that he couldn't just get out whenever he wanted. Even him knowing that I knew he did it, he never does it at the wrong time. He's never gotten out of his cage when I wasn't home and destroyed anything. He just said at that moment, she wants me to be with her and I will go over there myself because you have to understand, he'd been looking at me for a while. Like he'd just been looking and the way he was looking was the way I was looking. He was just looking at each other and I'm thinking deeply and it's like he's thinking deeply because obviously he thought, nah, you know what? I'm gonna do this right now. I'm just gonna do it. Just gonna open the bowl, get out, show her that I know what's up and fly to her. Right, Cody? And if you guys get anything out of this, it's not that I want you to say, oh my God, your bird doesn't know that you're working in this and that. It's not those emotions that I'm placing on the parrot that I want you to believe. It's all the complex understandings that a bird has that what he can do to see you is at the right time. There's just so many things that if you have a bird and you watch their behaviors, especially if you engage with them all of the time, if you watch a bird like you're a biologist or an ornithologist or you just really try to understand their behavior, you will learn so much. And one of the main things you're going to learn is that you know nothing. You're going to learn that these beings are so much more complex, intelligent and outstanding than you could ever imagine. So when people write to me, birds don't have all these emotions and all these ideas. You have to pay attention to your bird. I'm not saying the bird is saying, she's working right now. Now would be a really good time. I'm saying that the bird is in tune with something much, much more. You guys must remember, we didn't learn to speak African gray. We don't learn to speak parrot, yet parrots learn to speak English. They learn to speak so many languages to communicate with us. And for those of you who say that birds are just mimicking, that is already scientifically proven not to be true, birds know and understand what they are saying. And only if you live with one, will you be able to understand that. You should watch videos on Alex the African Gray and follow Irene Pepperburg and her work with parrots and you'll really begin to understand what it is that parrots are capable of. So sometimes from these videos, I just want you to understand the capabilities of parrots, their abilities to communicate, to understand, to have compassion, jealousies, lots of feelings that you would never imagine an animal having. That's what I want you guys to get out of these videos more than anything because I believe that if you understand that, you will understand how important it is to engage and not cage these complex little beings that are so super intelligent. Imagine yourself being stuck in a room all day long with no phone, no entertainment, no friend, no boyfriend, no best friend, nothing. Just you waiting for that one person to give you interaction and maybe something to eat. You wouldn't be able to do it. So I'm just here to give you a little bit of a mindset change and help educate you on giving birds the best life that you possibly can. If you know someone who has a bird in a cage, please help them educate them, spread the word. It's very, very important to me and to the parrots community. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this Storytime Sunday. I apologize that Cody has not stayed here throughout the entire video. But what Cody has done during this video is chew up my Sean Penn book. So that's, uh, I have a bunch of books that are just chewed up by my birds. Anyway guys, thank you so much for watching. Please follow me on social media for more bird antics, bird pictures, bird stories. Please subscribe to this channel. Like, comment and share this video. It helps me make new content for you guys and keep at it. If you guys want to share your birds or your bird stories or want me to know your birds, please come join Parrot Station. It's our Facebook group for parrot owners. It's huge guys. Now we have over 25,000 members. I could have never, ever dreamed. He's back on my Sean Penn book. So I have to go. Thank you guys so much. Bye.