JellyBean needs a home

Last month, I was contacted by a wonderful woman, Anna, who runs a parrot rescue in New Mexico.  She had contacted me because she'd been googling around about severe macaws and ran across my blog, where Rocky is, of course, featured prominently.  She asked me if I might be interested in possibly adopting a severe macaw that sounded a lot like Rocky, with the main difference being that he prefers women and will do everything he can to attack men.

As much as I've fallen for this little guy after e-mailing with Anna, and especially after seeing pictures and a video of him, we are at capacity in our house and just can't take anyone else in.  However, I suggested that I could highlight JellyBean on my blog, since presumably people who are interested in severe macaws might find out about him.  And after the amazing experience of placing Steve in the perfect home, I thought it was worth a try.

So, meet JellyBean:

JellyBean is approximately 19 years old (the same age Rocky was when we adopted him.)  He lived with one family for most of this time, but it was not happy for JellyBean.  It's always difficult to get accurate information out of people when they don't want to admit how poorly they were treating their animals, but we were told that he was kept in a basement, with very little human interaction toward the end of his tenure there.  The little human interaction he did have involved people throwing things at his cage, or pulling him out of his cage by his tail.

One of my posts that Anna found was this one, and she agrees that it accurately describes JellyBean.  I am very confident that in the right, understanding, home, he will thrive; the trick is finding that home for such a challenging parrot.  (Anna also mentioned to me that she knows of a 40 year old severe macaw that was tame to both her and her husband.  Since Rocky is only 24, dare I hope we could achieve this in the next 16 years?)

Here is a short youtube video of JellyBean:

As I've written before, many people inadvertently teach their parrots to bite.  They do this by ignoring the bird's body language, so finally, for the bird to get his point across, he bites.  Pretty soon, he stops giving off the warning signs and resorts immediately to biting.  After all, if warnings didn't work, why bother with them?  It seems like this happened with JellyBean.  He was definitely a "bite first" kind of guy.  Anna has been working with him and he's learning to use other methods to express himself; however, his new home will have to be very careful watching his body language.

JellyBean currently lives in New Mexico, though Anna would be willing to have him move to a different part of the country for the right home.  These are details that would need to be worked out with her.  If you are interested in learning more about JellyBean, please e-mail me and I will forward your e-mail on to Anna.

As you can see, he's come a long way under Anna's care.  However, she runs a rescue, not a sanctuary, so he needs to find a home in order to open up room for other parrots.