I have recently brought home my first pet in a decade. Meet Humbert Humbird, a lovable scamp who — at a mere three months old — has not quite grown into the majesty and amorous prowess of his name. Training comes along nicely: one week in, as I write this, he happily perches atop my keyboard, occasionally entranced by the horizontal march of tasty looking cryptographical insects across the screen. He will step up on my finger on command, enjoys having his head scratched, and will let me kiss him. Humbert Humbird is a GOOD bird.
Still, other elements of being a pet owner are trying. For example, Humbert enjoys flying around the room, excitedly dropping turds everywhere. Due to the particular chemical make-up of the budgerigar faece, these solidify within seconds and are relatively easy to sweep up, but there is still something gauche about inhabiting an apartment covered in parakeet turds.
Another game Humbert likes to play is going to the bottom of his cage and flapping his wings for several minutes straight, sending a Hiroshima-like cloud of bird seed and gravel spraying around the room. He particularly likes to do this mere seconds after the cleaning girl has left for the week. On such occasions, he deftly dodges all karate kicks aimed in his direction.
Just in time, then! iRobot has just announced their latest Roomba: the Pets series, which includes a larger sweeping bin (perfect for voluminously ballooning up with seed chaff, gravel and fossilized parakeet crap) and a series of pet-oriented brushes. In truth, it’s aimed more for dog and cat owners, but I imagine not only buying one, but installing a tiny little perch on top of it for Humbert to ride around like a robotic steed. It is perhaps the only way I’ll ever train him to clean up after himself.
iRobot Introduces Roomba Pet [Business Wire]
So cutie cute cute. And yes, I had a pair of parakeets, and the most I got out of them was “we’re not that scared of you” since they bonded with each other so strongly.
@5 right on. That’s absolutely true, also.
I had a parakeet when I was 11. She was a goddamn genius bird. She used to sit on me while I read books, and she nibbled on the pages. She would also sit on the stem of my eyeglasses and gently nibble on my hair and eyelashes. When I was in college, she died of ovarian cancer — no kidding.
the Roomba mounted perch will need to hang off the back of the Roomba, spoileresque. Otherwise the top of your Roomba would slowly become covered in poop, then you’d need another tinier Roomba to patrol the top of your main Roomba.
Humbert Humbird? Nabokov on the brain much?
After you build the Roomba perch you need to get Mr. Humbird a small set of armor and lance to control his territory.
Please remember that budgies are swarm birds – keeping one alone falls under cruel and unusual punishment in my book. I know, having two birds that use your apartment as a littertray is annoying – but he will be way happier witha friend.
My daughter likes to put kittens on the roomba and send them for a ride around the room. The kittens never seem alarmed, although very few of them show any sign of actually enjoying it. Mostly they jump off or fall asleep.
–Charlie
Well, then I’m cruel and unusual: that may happen a year from now — Humbert needs a Quilty — but parakeets do not bond with a human easily if they have another parakeet in the cage to bond with instead. A person can be a parakeet’s flock, just like a human can be a dog’s pack. I’ve had happy parakeets in my childhood who absolutely doted on me and my family, came when called and were given free reign of the house… I doubt they could have been any happier if they’d had bird buddies from day one.
Anyway, Humbert is happy. He comes out of his cage every day, I play with him, he spends all day sitting besides me, I talk to him constantly and he spends a lot of time happily tweeting. Don’t fret too much about him.
Jenn, your book reading story reminds me of a cool experience I had. I was staying in this awesome lodge in the jungle along the Amazon – which was pretty incredible by itself – reading a book in a hammock. A toucan walked up and eyed me for a while. He then jumped on the hammock with me, and pulled the book out of my hands. Turns out he’s a tame toucan that loves attention, hates people paying attention to other stuff. Later, he untied my shoes. What a joker.
Mazal tov, Brownlee. Now you can give that extra SIM card to Humbert Humbird.
He looks like a very sweet bird, I hope he learns to talk for you.
I do think Humbert Humbird could use some nicer perches. Those hard plastic ones can’t be good for his feet.
#1: Actually, I was going to say that the perch should be mounted hanging in front of the Roomba, for similar reasons except that the poop would be scooped up immediately, not never.
I do like the idea of a smaller roomba on top of the larger roomba, though, although that smaller would would need a smaller one on it, and so on ad infinitum…