A consideration regarding owning a parrot.

Hooey is an Amazon parrot and he loves to vocalize. He has many different squawks. In the summer time when the windows are open I can hear him for quite a distance outside. Hooey is actually the reason we ended up buying our house. We had lived in an apartment. The landlord agreed to us having the pets we had at the time we moved in.


We had two cats named Fizzy and Clyde, as well as Hibbs and Hooey. We lived on the second floor and our neighbor on the first floor bred and raised Shih Tsu dogs. Talk about a small world, our downstairs neighbor was the first owner of Hooey. She had given him to a friend who in turn ended up giving him to us. When she gave Hooey to her friend it was with the stipulation that he keep Hooey. She was surprised and upset when she found out we had him but she got over it quick because she knew Hooey was in a good home. We had a good relationship with her being fellow animal lover. Then she moved out.


A new neighbor moved in and not to long afterwards we had a lot of problems with her. At first she did not know that Hooey was a parrot. She could hear something but she thought it was a puppy. It turns out this woman had no tolerance for Hibb's barking or Hooey's squawking. As soon as she found out we had a parrot she was calling our landlord constantly about him. She was a lawyer and worked at home. She would tell me that while I was at work Hibbs barked all day and she could hear Hooey all the time too. I talked to her and she even agreed that her intolerance was unreasonable so I tried as hard as I could to keep the noise down to a minimum but my efforts did nothing to satisfy the woman.


Although our landlord was aware of his agreement with us as to our pets the constant phone calls from our new neighbor wore on him. He wanted us to get rid of Hooey! We had Hooey for about three years at the point and I was not willing to give him up. We ended up having to move so we were fortunate enough to get a house and now we have no problems with our neighbors.


The point of this story is that Parrots can be loud. Before you get a parrot for a pet keep this in mind, your neighbors may not be tolerant of the noise and it is difficult and unfair to stifle the bird. If you have your own home and feel you can adjust to the loud sounds that come out of a parrot, and boy do I mean loud, it is amazing the volume they can produce, then you may really enjoy a parrot for a pet.


Donna