I was playing around with my budgie Fester, working on our hand-taming training and such. Lately, she’s been having fun stepping out onto her door, which falls like a drawbridge, which is fine as long as I keep her supervised, since her wings are clipped and I don’t want her falling to the floor.
So I try not to keep her there for too long, but it’s hard to get her to back up back into her cage, and millet doesn’t always work as a lure if she’s interested in something (AKA the string that holds the door up). So I let her stay out a little longer than I’d like.
Then she started getting a little silly, and hanging almost upside down on the bars of the door, and I was getting worried. For some reason, she can’t seem to figure out how to walk correctly on the cage bars when they’re underneath her, haha. But then, she must’ve lost her footing or something, and he flew to the floor, just like I was worried about.
No big deal, right? I bend down real low and offer her my hand with the millet. Then she really scares me by refusing, and flapping her way all the way into the kitchen, catching the dogs’ attention! This is terrible! With all of this going on, there’s no way she’ll be trusting enough to step on my hand to get her back to her cage. I’m forced to gab a towel and get her back in the cage that way.
It’s been a good ten minutes or so since I forced her back inside, and she hasn’t moved. I’m even playing videos of happy budgie sounds, since a lot of people say that it helps calm them down sometimes, or at least make them feel comfortable. She’s chirping, but not moving around her cage at all.
I feel terrible about it, and I’m afraid she’ll take a long time to trust me again. Major step back in our training and bonding, I’m afraid.
