His Personality
Victor had a very complex and unique personality. Like most budgies, he liked to be the center of attention, but unlike others he would often make comments to get involved in what was happening. He knew how to tease, make fun of someone and even laugh at them. He also proved to have an incredible but naughty sense of humour. You're probably thinking, "Oh come on, a bird with a sense of humour?" Try visiting Victor's Funniest Site where I put together all of his funniest recordings and you will understand what I mean. I also found by creating a site for his humour it helps to attract and get a wider range of people interested in parrot intelligence.
One of his shining points was his remarkable imagination. He had dreams and talked in his sleep and even play acted. He also understood the concept of story telling. A excellent file to listen to is the "Eating Cheese File" on the animations download page where he was pretending to eat cheese because he wanted some. He actually makes the sounds of a person who is eating something really scrumptious, while at the same time saying, "Cheese, good, MM., good."
His most recent development was a remarkable ability to tell stories and translate bird talk for his mate Betty. This goes far beyond that of any other research in the animal intelligence field. The file is called "The Blue Takes Work" and I believe it to be one of the first pieces of literature ever composed by an animal. Here are some other funny audio files that you can listen to: "Fuzzy Stupid" and "I need to fart" all from the conversations downloads page.
During the last few months of his life he developed a strong belief in God and religion. He made many recordings during this time where he spoke about the afterlife and even imagined talking with God. Other than explaining the concept of God to him, and reading a few pages of the New Testament to him only once, he developed his own understanding of religion. Many people believe Victor's recordings were divinely inspired. To me they showed a strong belief in spiritualism and a possible link, that we have more in common to animals, than anyone ever thought possible before.
You can hear these files on the conversations page under the Heavens Gate section.
Copyright © April, 2001 Ryan Reynolds
Here is Victor playing his favorite game that he called pick up penny. In this picture it's a 25 cent piece he's playing with.
He was lucky my wife didn't catch him making that mess or he would have been grounded .
