Naturalists and Flat-Tailing

Once upon a distant time there existed a creature called a Naturalist. Naturalists were creatures who loved animals, perhaps to excess, and were paid for writing about this fact (perhaps to excess). In that heyday of animal-writing I might have had a future writing about things like the anecdote below; unfortunately, the Naturalist, at least the paid one, has gone the way of the mastodon and been replaced by the sleeker, more reproductivally-fit Science Writer. (I've heard that there were actual Loren Eisley sightings up until 1977, but the observers may have been mistaking a Richard Dawkins for an Eisley, as both are, or were, similarly-sized brownish mammals.)

"Flat-tailing" is the nice, euphemistic phrase for what Giant Bird is currently obsessed with, now that it is spring in the hemisphere where his species originates. The less polite and more mammal-centric phrase would be "humping my arm" or "rubbing his cloaca on me." Yes, it is as disgusting as it sounds. This happens every fall--Giant Bird gets hormonal and starts building nests, looking for things to fight, and trying to get me to lay eggs. It could be far worse, though: I once worked at a facility where a human-imprinted large raptor (if I recall correctly a red-shouldered hawk) fell in love with his keeper and attempted a coital clutch on her leg. Unfortunately, the keeper was not covered in dinosaur accoutrements such as feathers and scales, and she ended up with a severe bone infection where a talon nicked her femur and almost lost the leg. This is one of my favorite cautionary tales about why it might not be a good thing to imprint birds on humans--birds are equipped with the full Therapod suite of feathers, talons, beak, and scales, and we are just furless smushes.

I would also like to warn potential parrot owners out there that if you get a parrot, he or she is likely to express affection by throwing up on you and attempting to rub his/her all-purpose poo-hole on you until climax. So keep an open mind and a rolled-up sleeve, and figure in some extra dry cleaning bills in mating season. Yecch.