I added a 4-year-old Goffin’s Cockatoo to my menagerie in January with little real bird experience in my past.

My stepmom had a full-sized cockatoo when I was a teenager so I know they can be moody, noisy and demanding pets.

And then Nala took a liking to me.

I don’t know why. But it was clear from the get-go that she wanted me.

I think Nala recognized what a soft-hearted sucker I am.

So having a cockatoo like this little lady is like having an agressive toddler with the sophisticated yet immature brain of a teenager. Nala is having a mini-tantrum right now because I’m not paying attention to her yet she refuses to step up.

But what I wanted to mention today, is I noticed an amusing behavior. She has a nice bowl of pellet and seeds in her cage. I check it and clean it every day.

On days when I am too slow to feed her, and she is hungry, or if she’s picked out all of her favorites from the bowl, she peels up the newspaper from the bottom of her cage and uses her toes and beak to forage from the bottom of the cage for things she discarded earlier.

One day she even found a peanut.