 Hey guys, my name is Marlene McCohen and this is, I don't know who this is. I have no idea who this is, but he is sitting on my shoulder right now, so yeah, this has happened. But let me tell you exactly what has happened. Oh wow, you're talking, you like it, right? I hate not having a name to introduce him with. Why don't we call you Leo for now? This is Leo. I decided right now that this is Leo. Here's the story with Leo. Leo is a red lord Amazon, but he's a hybrid. He's obviously mixed with something else because you can see with all of this yellow. I had a very busy day. I woke up, went on an audition, bought a few bird things, and then I went into the bird store and there was Leo and it was an instant love. I just saw his beauty and I was like, oh my God, you're so beautiful, hi. And then he steps up on me and I'm like, oh my God. And then I don't really know how he's going to behave from that moment. But next thing you know, I'm cuddling him and I'm like, what, you are the sweetest little baby. And then I found out the story of Leo. Leo lived with a few other birds and I think there was like at least five and the owner died of a heart attack, like just out of nowhere, died of a heart attack. And as you can see, Leo kind of has some, I guess like plucking issues, very tattered feathers. I mean, he's beautiful, but you can tell that the feathers are frayed. So either he got depressed from his owner dying or I'm not sure what. So from what I understand, his brother brought him to the bird store and he's looking for a home. So I made some videos about Leo looking for a home. Now keep in mind his name's not Leo. And as far as I know, nobody left any information on the bird's name. So if you were to get Leo, you could name Leo yourself. But I gotta be honest with you guys, I am having a very hard time not keeping Leo. I get to keep Leo for the night. So what happened was Leo fell in love with me and was so upset when I was leaving that my friend at birds plus who owns birds plus said, you know what, just take him for the night. You can make a video with him and see how you like him. I love him, but I can't have another bird. Can I? Oh, you're so sweet. I love Leo. Another reason I'm using the name Leo is because I'm a Leo and George is a Leo. And I'm thinking like if I say, oh, I just found out the bird's name is Leo, then George will be like, Oh my God, we have to have him. But I mean, that's just like a wise trick on my part. And for those of you kids wanting to get your parents to fall in love with a pet, come up with some name that's like nostalgic to them and pretend that was the name of the pet that you want. People say I told you that and for you parents that are watching, just just just don't show this to your kids. Anyway, so this is my best friend right now. I have to tell you what Leo and I did today. We already went to CBS together. We've done a lot together today. It's like Leo would be a great showbird, although I don't even know if he talks, but he doesn't need to talk. I love him anyway. Oh, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Don't eat my lipstick. I love Leo the Amazon, who is currently with me. And by the way, still echoing. So not done with this room. I just got back from Washington. So I might have a really odd echo, but I got some really cool things. I swear. I swear. Oh, by the way, if you watch my Instagram story, you know about Leo already because you're on top of it. So you get to know in advance what's going to happen. And you might know about this guy. He talks. He's a really angry bird. Okay. He does angry, angry things. So if you guys want to watch and you can see me, I will tell you a lot of more interesting stuff than Marla here tells me. So you watch me. He's going to be like my character for some stuff. I don't know what. I just got attached. I don't even care for stuffed animals, but this was like all the colors. I love all the colors in one. That's probably why I like Leo so much. Now, as promised, let's get to the indie artist stuff. I have something to open here, but I also have something unfortunate to tell whoever sent me this. There's nothing in it. All it has in it is one piece that says hi, unless this was literally the message, then that's hilarious. That's actually very funny because how could this rip perfectly say hi? It says hi. So if this is the male, I'm dying. I love it. If it's not and it's something is missing. I'm so sorry. I didn't do it. I don't know how it got lost, but if that's it, that's hilarious and creepy at the same time, but I'm always down for that weird stuff. Now we have something else. I love letters. Oh my God. I see so much cute stuff. Let me read the letter first because that's amazing. Dear Marlene, sincerely, Ellie Litturnow. I hope I pronounced that right. P.S. Say hi to the birdies for me. Oh, I will. I know this. This drawing I shared it on my Instagram. I love this. This is all of my birds. This is so beautiful. This is Jersey and her donut with Vinny in the box. Ellie, you are so talented. You can be famous if you live with me. I'm going to put these all over the wall. Picasso, Vinny. They're from videos. He just sits on my shoulder. Look at this, guys. Cody, Vinny, Picasso, Jersey. Rocky. How gorgeous is that? This is perfect. Oh my God, guys. Look at these. These are beautiful. This is amazing. If this is breakable, I probably won't use it on my phone, but this is so cute. Ellie, you are so talented. I can't believe you've sent me this stuff. This is going on my wall. I love it. Look at Picasso. Ellie, you're so talented. Go follow Ellie at Merlin the Mini Parrot. Who knows? You're so lucky and you'll get a drawing of your bird. This bird has been cuddling me all day. I'm not kidding you, like cuddling me. It's wonderful. Oh my God. I don't want to let this bird go tomorrow, but if you guys are interested in a bird, you've got to let me know because if you live in Los Angeles, this is a really amazing little... Now I'm going to tell you the story of my first large bird, which was a yellow-headed Amazon named Peppy. Before Peppy, I had cockatiels and finches and parakeets and love birds, but I had never had a large bird before. Peppy was actually my first, and this is how it happened. So I was obsessed with parrots. As you guys know, I still am, and I would study birds all the time. I would have magazines delivered, special books. I wanted to know everything that I could about birds. And I told my dad, I am so ready for a larger bird. And my dad was like, okay, we'll get you one. But the thing with my dad is I would tell him things, and I wasn't sure if he was going to actively start doing something about it. We also lived in a different country, so it was kind of weird knowing exactly what to do. And dad wasn't exactly the type that said, okay, you want something, let's go get it. I would say that, but then the way it came would always be in the most mysterious ways. Like I never knew if my dad actually went seeking for the thing that I asked for or if it just came to him because things just kind of come to him, or maybe things just kind of come to me. So anyway, I went to boarding school, and boarding school is not exactly what you would think. It was a lot more fun and really cool. And I started boarding school when I turned 16 years old. So on the weekends when I came home, by the way, my parents like literally lived like a town away. Like I could probably, if I wanted to, ride my bike to that town. My brother had ridden his bike to visit me in boarding school many, many times. So my dad confirms that he's going to get me a bird or he's at least going to think about it. Or I just know now if I happen to find one, he'll definitely be open to it. That's what I know right now. What are you doing? But with that kind of information, it's also very possible that nothing will happen. So I go off to boarding school and a week later, I come home. Now in boarding school, we would come home every other weekend or every weekend, something like that. And I get home and my dad picks me up and we go somewhere and he goes, Oh, my friend is going to meet me now. You see. And I'm like, okay. So here we are out in the middle of the town. And suddenly 10 minutes later, pulls up a pickup truck with a huge cage in the back. And the scruffiest Amazon you'll ever see. He wasn't a pluckery. He was just like grumpy, scruffy. I don't know how to explain him. Very untamed bird. And this is to be my first large parrot. So my dad says, this is my friend. He had a bird and then he can't take care of it no more. And I said, my daughter is looking for a bird. So here you are. And I'm like, what? Like, I thought this was going to be a process like my first large parrot, like all the research that I've done, everything I've been wondering about, like going to a breeder or a store or a rescue and deciding like, which will be my bird fail? Like none of that happened. In hindsight, it's better because technically this was a rescue. So there's this bird in this cage and we bring him home and I'm looking at him and he's looking at me, he's very grumpy. He's not the nicest bird in the world at all. He never ever talked. And I'm like, okay. Well, obviously I'm not going to leave him with my parents. So what do I do? I start working with the bird and I get him to step up at least. So he steps up, but he's still kind of a very grumpy bird. So I decide I'm going to take him to boarding school with me. Now, I think this was the second year of boarding school. So I just straight up one day showed up with the bird's cage in my dorm room, I guess you would call it. I had one whole side to myself because it was supposed to be like two girls on this side and two girls on that side and like a bathroom in the middle. But my roommate like left and never came back. So I had like this whole side to myself. So you leave, guess who's moving in? A bird. So this big Amazon and like nobody says much of anything to me about it except, oh, what do we have here? And I'm like, this is my bird. He's going to be living with me now. Okay, does he make noise? No, not as far as I know. I think we need some permission. Well, you can get permission all you want, but he's just going to be here. That was my like head counselor. It was like a dude that was like in charge of all of us. And then we had like what you call like the night mom. I don't know what you would call her exactly, but she came around every night. She was kind of like the night nurse or something. I don't know. And she basically brought us our evening snack, which I never ate because I was basically gluten free before even knowing that I should be. I just like have never eaten a donut in my life. Don't tell Jersey and everybody with the donut story video. It's there were donuts there. She did steal a donut, but it wasn't mine. Anyhow, this bird is there every day grumpy. He's so grumpy. I don't even know how to explain it. And this is my first like time having to deal with an extremely untamed large parrot. So I'm just like step up, step up, step up. And every day he just sits there and he doesn't want to come out. But I like make sure he comes out and I put him on top of the cage. So at least he's like hanging out with me and I create little spots for him to play, but he's just as fine not hanging out with me. You know what I mean? But I wasn't going to let that fly. I wanted to get like love from him. I wanted him to be free and happy. So day after day, he working with the bird and it's taking a rather long time for him to come around. And finally on like the seventh day, they deliver a cinnamon bun. And I was not going to be eating a cinnamon bun. So I was like, here you try some. Okay, now we know we got to give our birds all these healthy things. But let's be honest. The bird wanted a cinnamon bun. I gave it to him and boy did that work. He was like, hey, that's cinnamon that you're not eating. How about I have some of it? I was like, okay, is this going to make you like me? Yeah. So the good news was he already like stepped up. He would step up to me, but he would got like kind of aggressive and grumpy. So finally I would use the cinnamon bun to give him a treat similar to the way you would use a clicker. But basically I would eliminate his negative behavior by reinforcing his positive behavior with the cinnamon bun and it worked. And this bird came around and I was able to have him on other people. And oh my God, he could have been, he must have been at least 25 years old. And he was a really cute bird after a while. He never got like to become the most cuddly bird. I could give him some head scratches, but I couldn't exactly like cuddle him, which by the way, I can do with him. That only took me five minutes to get to with this guy. So far he hasn't let anybody else do it, but he just loves me and I love him. So this bird we named Peppy because my mom had always fantasized about naming a bird Peppy. So in order for my dad to make sure that my mom was going to be okay with me having a bird, a large bird come home with me every weekend or live with me. If I was at home for the summer, he basically said the bird's name is Peppy. Great idea, right? Kind of where I got it from, hence Leo. So she loves Peppy because she was like, Peppy, but Peppy stayed out of her way and didn't really get involved with her so much. So she really enjoyed that. Now one day we lived on a penthouse on the fifth floor and one day Peppy flew away. And I was devastated that I lost this bird. I don't even know how he flew off. He flew off the balcony and basically ended up on top of the tallest tree you could ever imagine. Like something about as tall as a palm tree. It was that tall, but it had branches. So that was the good thing. So my brother asked me to like hoist him up. And when I say hoist, I don't even mean that like he's going two feet. This dude climbed. Now remember, he must have been about like 14 years old. Climbed the tree like a monkey, like straight up climb. Like when you're that high up in a tree, you don't even know if you're going to be able to catch the bird. Like a flighted parrot that isn't exactly the friendliest bird in the world. And not exactly close to my brother, if you know what I mean. So there goes my brother up this tree. It must have been about like 30 feet high. I'm not kidding you. Like it was lining the park. And somehow he grabs the bird. I don't know if the bird was scared and it came to him because sometimes birds do that. Their behavior is better when they're in fear. They'll tend to come to you when normally they wouldn't or normally they might be a little more aggressive. So Peppy did that. And then we got him back. And that was a cute story of how we got Peppy back. So he's climbing this tree. He's climbing down this tree with a bird. It was the craziest thing to watch. And the next thing you know, he gives the bird to me and I run upstairs and have my parrot. So that was my first large parrot. That was on Amazon. I bet you guys did not know that. I love the smell of Peppy. This guy smells great. I love the smell of this guy. How gorgeous is this guy? Do you know how much easier it is to do a video with him rather than Cody? I love Amazons. I think they're the cutest in the world. I can't wait for my sister to meet this guy right now. My sister is about to come over and I'm hoping that he will really be nice to my sister so that she wants to snuggle him too because she saw my Instagram story and was like, what did you do? And I'm like, nothing. I just brought him home for the night. But look how gorgeous he is. I love him and he matches me when I wear red. I thought I had to do everything pink and green now for Picasso. Look at this guy. He's bringing my darkness back. Right? Ooh, tasty. For those of you asking, no spit was exchanged, okay? You can kiss your bird without them getting saliva. Just saying. Anyway, that is it guys. I want to thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this Storytime Sunday. I want to thank Ellie for the amazing artwork. I want to apologize to whoever sent me this that your stuff got lost in the mail or maybe you meant to send me this little note in which case I'm with you. I think that's hilarious. I think it's hilarious too. So it's either going to be hilarious to you or really sad. I guess we're going to find out. I invite you guys to follow me on social media on Instagram at Marlene McOwen. You can be the first to know what's probably going to be in my videos due to my Storytime Escapades. If you want me to keep this guy or you think that I should, I probably shouldn't. Let me know in the comments. Let me know in the comments if you live nearby in Los Angeles and maybe you want this guy so that I know he's going to a really good home. And he prefers women, I'm not sure, although he did step up to George earlier and let George beat him. So overall, he has a really good temperament. Check out Products I Love. If you're just getting a bird or curious about things that you should buy for your birds. An Amazon link of mine, Book Market, you'll see all the products that I love to get for my birds and I think it will make your life a little bit easier. If you want to send me fan art, my PO Box is listed in the about section on my YouTube channel and I will feature it. All this stuff is going to go up on my wall right here in my new YouTube studio. I was looking at tiles today, print your photography tiles, but these are so much better. Thank you so much. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Check out the Jersey and the Donut Merch, art by Linz, beautiful, beautiful stuff. I love you guys so much. Remember, if you can give a bird a really good life, if you can adopt a bird or an older bird that needs a home and work with him, that would be amazing. Go out, go forth, live your dreams, guys. Don't bully anybody. Bullying is just ridiculous and it just shows such low self esteem. And on that note, I love you guys.