My parrot ate my keyboard

One of the great joys in life is having pets. The unconditional love, the snuggles, the excitement they show when you get home — these things add an emotional fulfillment to daily existence that can’t be achieved in another way. I think everyone’s life would be better with a pet (or two) in their lives. It’s an incredible experience. Except for those few times when it isn’t.

Both my wife and I work from home, and in a two-bedroom Los Angeles apartment with a kid, two dogs, and a bird, we’re constantly in close quarters. Kiyo, our Senegal parrot, has the best view of us all with his cage situated at a corner wraparound window in our living room. It allows him to get the most sunlight possible, and also act as our notification system, as whenever someone we know walks up the front path he lets out a loud and distinctive squawk. My daily workspace, where I spend my time researching and writing for you, is only a few feet away from the door to his cage (I wasn’t kidding about close quarters). It swings open when we want to let him out, which is on a daily basis.

It’s a nice cage. Inside is a perch swing, some stiff ropes that stretch from one side to the other, three to four toys that we rotate out (or replace when Kiyo inevitably destroys one), a water dish, and some small cups for food. On top of the cage is a platform with even more toys and another perch for when he wants to be outside of his cage’s interior. There’s a lot to keep his attention. But then, a mere two feet away, is another “toy” that lights up and grabs his attention — my laptop keyboard.

Usually I notice him before he wreaks any havoc. He holds onto the edge of his cage and leans out toward my desk, almost taunting me with his intentions. Or if the curtains are close enough, he’ll grab on and climb over toward the side of my desk. My main concern is always the power cable, either one directly from the wall or a Thunderbolt from my monitor that charges my MacBook Air while sending video for an extended screen workspace.

You’d think I might have learned something 10 years ago, when I returned to my desk to discover my Razer Anansi keyboard missing nearly two dozen keys. They were strewn about the floor surrounding my desk; there, my Chihuahua had decided to get in on the fun and finish the job. Thankfully she only chewed on them and didn’t consider them a crunchy treat. But no, there was no lesson learned that day.

Instead, in mid-July, I caught Kiyo red-beaked as he sat on my laptop’s touchpad, spacebar in his mouth. My exasperated “Kiyo!” was met with him tossing it aside and loudly squawking at me. (Could there also have been some satisfaction behind that exclamation of his? Perhaps I’m jaded by my anger, but yes, he was immensely happy with himself.)

Now, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. I honestly hate typing on a laptop keyboard, and this theft forced me to finally set up my HyperX Alloy Origins (which is usually connected directly to my Windows desktop PC) through my monitor’s USB hub and use it as my primary keyboard for the MacBook. But this is an imperfect solution, because even when I’m using the secondary keyboard, the laptop keyboard is fully out there like a goat enticing a dinosaur. And if I ever take my laptop away from my desk to use somewhere else, I need all those keys working.

Not surprisingly, there are multiple Reddit threads about protecting a keyboard from a bird’s ruthless ire. One suggestion is to get a plastic keyboard cover to keep their beaks away from the keys themselves (although, as many in the thread also point out, parrots are smart enough to just take that cover off to get to the sweet, sweet keys underneath). Another is to get them a cheap keyboard of their own and maybe put food inside the keys as incentive to go after it instead of your own, but making a keyboard seem more like a snack sounds like a bad idea to me. Really what it comes down to is making sure your second keyboard is put away and laptop is closed when you leave it, especially if there’s a bird around.

I will say that most of the time Kiyo is incredibly well behaved. My wife has done a great job training him over the years. But as with kids, sometimes birds act up, and if we make the mistake of leaving him for a few minutes with his cage door open, things can happen. The occasional missing keyboard key or attack on my slippers (which he cannot abide for some reason) is worth his bouncing dance or the “love you” we get on the regular. The joy of pets is in the day-to-day love and interactions.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make a Genius Bar appointment to fix my spacebar.