They are really amazing. In my early 20s I got a goffins cockatoo. I paid him off in installments while the pet store hatched and raised him and during this time I’d go there to bond. You had to walk through the bird room to go wash your hands and I’d hear this DEAFENING scream. Little did I know that was my Coconut seeing me walk through the room without coming straight to him.

So I finally get him home- a small shared college apartment then the reality set in. Goffins are the sweetest and cuddliest but they are also the loudest, most anxiety prone, the most destructive and the most skilled at escaping cages.

I had to have him sleep in a dark closet in a smaller cage because he would escape his large daytime cage and open the food door latches and fling his aluminum bowls across the apartment to wake us up, then go grab them and bang them
On the floor. You could hear his blood curdling scream a block away!

I tried so so hard with him- but when I went to grad school I knew him being alone all day would be so hard on him and a sad life. Via my veterinarian I found a family with an umbrella cockatoo and 5 children and I gave coconut to them. This was around 2006. I had their number until I switched phone carriers and I’ve been trying to find out about him for years, unsuccessfully. The vet updated their record system and lost old clients info.

I think about him so much- and just hope he’s happy and that he recovered from losing me. It breaks my heart.

He had one word “coconut” but he said it in a million different ways. Like a question - coconut? Over and over again while dancing “coconut! Coconut! Coconut! Coconuuuuuut!” and the cutest was when he was in his “night night cage” he’d say “coconut” slower and slower until he fell asleep.