The best way to cook like a pro is to prepare like a pro. Begin by calling all the people you know that have birds. You must persuade them to take a vacation so you can obtain their feathered child. In persuasion, all rules fly out the window. You can spin your word web to entangle your target, achieving your goal. Explain the benefits of taking a train to Tuscan, or a bike to Boston. Anything to make them leave their homes.

An author’s note: do not threaten your intended target. This is bad because you most likely live near them, and moving is unethical. Also, they may call the police.

Once you have your bird, there are a few things you are going to need. For this recipe I used…

• 1 bird stand, roughly 6 feet tall, tripod “feet”
• 1 bird cage equipped with moving doors and removable plastic bottom (1 ½ x 1 ft.)
• 1 6-pound bag of bird seed
• 2 wooden pegs (6 inches long)
• 2 plastic containers, 3 inches’ long
• 5 assorted colorful plastic toys with mirrors
• 1 plastic ball with bell
• 1 bird, roughly 4” tall

Set up all of these materials according (or not) to the directions provided. Place your bird stand in a naturally lit (or closest to it) area and place the bird cage on the hook at the top of the stand. Viola! If you have successfully done this and kept the bird inside the cage, then you are halfway done. There are a couple of things that you may have noticed. The first being that setting up a cage is very hard, and the second being that the bird can make noises.

The bird that I used is a parakeet, lovingly named Chickpea by its owners.

Starting Vocabulary:

• Cheeseburger
• Chickpea
• Pretty Bird/Baby (animal seems to make these two confused, often sounds like: Bird Baby)
• Very loud alarm noise

Now that you have established that this is currently happening, we can continue with the recipe. The bird will not stop talking or making noise. This is a fact that you will have to come to terms with. The bird can also repeat anything it hears. Be sure that you clean your mouth with soap every night and say nothing bad about anything or anyone including the bird. Tell all your “bad natured” friends to stay away from the bird until further notice, and make sure that your TV is not “accidentally” turned to Family Guy or any other profane station. This can only end very, very badly.

Moving on! Add 4 medicine cups (30 ml) of the bird seed to one of the plastic dishes without removing the bird from its cage. If you remove the bird, you have officially lost the bird. The animal does not like you yet, it will not come to you if it’s called, and it will certainly not listen to you if you ask it nicely. If you have done this task without the creature being freed, then great! Fill the other plastic dish with water. If you have let loose the Kraken, hope that you didn’t leave any windows/fans/doors/ovens open or on. If by this stage you have lost the bird, you need to return the items purchased and move.

Once the bird is fed and watered, it is time to have some fun! Pick a Kidz Bop song, and dance around to it. If the bird follows you around (in the confines of its cage) then it likes you! If it doesn’t, turn the music off and leave it alone to soften to room temperature. 30 minutes or so should do the trick. Come back and talk to it, the mixture of socialization and friendliness should make it happy. Now, here is the tricky part of this recipe. Close all the doors and access points to the outside, shut off any avian-damaging appliances and turn all mirrors around. It’s time to remove the bird from its cage.

Open the cage and step back. You must prepare yourself for any flying assault. If you are greeted as a moving tree, you have been accepted by this animal! If you are immediately attacked, your bird is too salty and you must abandon the room for the next 24 hours. Start walking around with the bird on you. You may find that it moves to different parts of your body. The bird I used liked my head, in particular. You also may notice that the bird relieves itself anywhere it pleases. This is because the “public urination/defecation” law does not extend to parrots or parakeets. Keep a roll of paper towels at hand and hope for the best. In the meantime, have a dance party!

Uh-Oh! Does your bird not want to go back in its cage? No problem! I find that adding something shiny to the recipe works in moderation. Place any shiny object near the animal until it notices it. Then, slowly guide the bird towards the cage door and (hopefully) into the cage. Slam and latch the door. Birds will notice within a few seconds and get furious. Even the sweetest of batches can be a bit bitter near the center.

Do you have a mess? Was your mixture too hard to keep in check? You may have found small pellets around your bird. These are not chocolate chips, and should not be eaten under any circumstances. Luckily, this is an easy mess to clean! If the mess is on a hard surface, use any cleaning product and a paper towel to wipe it away. If it is on carpet or fabric, there are two options. The first is to use a paper towel and then spot treat the area. The second is to wait for the “chips” to solidify, then vacuum them up. You may be thinking “wait, I didn’t sign up for this, that’s gross!” and you are right. But, when cooking with birds, there will be some sort of a mess.

When this recipe is done—mine took a week—it’s time to return the bird! Here was the outcome of this concoction, yours may be a bit different!

Ending Vocabulary:

• Chick/Chickpea (as well as varying fragments)
• “Boo-Bee-Doo-Boop” (Very bad beatboxing)
• Cheeseburger
• Very intense cricket sounds (often able to communicate with crickets)
• Cooing (learned from mourning dove)
• Kissing noises followed by violent pecking.
• “Coopie Coopie” (the resident dog, usually said loud enough to confuse him)
• Jerk/Don’t be a Jerk (did not listen to advice)
• Amplified alarm noise
• C-aaaaa-rooo-lyyynnn (usually repeated at 4 am)
• The introduction to Sara Barellies “Love Song”
• Dale! (learned from Pitbull)
• What can only be described as “EEEEEEEEEEK-chirp” (done every time someone leaves the room, and repeated until satisfied with the number of people near it)
• Clicking
• “Nobody puts baby bird in a corner”
• Pretty Bird/Baby (still very confused by this)
• Wolf whistle (no one who came in contact with the bird will admit to teaching it this)
• Bird to your mother
• What seems to be the problem, officer?
• I’m a parakeet (usually said matter-of-factly)

No birds were cooked or harmed during the making of this article.