2022—Going Bananas

Bobo is going bananas. She seems obsessed with them. I’m not sure why this started but a month ago, I had to take Bobo to the vet where she spent a couple of nights and came home to a two-week, twice daily oral antibiotic regimen. That is behind us now and she has improved somewhat but she is still not back to her old self. The oddest thing about whatever afflicts her is that her eating habits have changed dramatically. Where she once ate just a few of the healthy bird pellets, a diet that she’s been on for twenty years, she now often empties the bowl. She has always loved dried chili peppers, eating some, using one to scratch her head, and carrying one with her wherever she roams so I could always tell where she’d been because she dropped peppers along the way, her version of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Now, she is barely touching them. But it’s the banana thing that really has my attention. She has always liked bananas but she seems obsessed with them now, racing to her bowl to get a slice. Once the banana slice is in her beak she climbs out of her cage to come to the top to eat it. It is fascinating to watch her climb out with the banana in her beak because she uses her beak as a third hand, grabbing onto the cage bars, swinging one foot to the next bar, then moving her beak again. Amazingly, the banana isn’t squashed and remains intact until she’s atop her cage to consume it. At one time when she ate banana slices she’d take a bite or two then drop it. Now she consumes it all, then heads back for seconds.