Aviary B, for those of you who don't know, is the home of one of the top three craziest/scariest male crows, Kukuna. Kukuna, in Hawaiian, means "ray" or "spoke" as in a ray of sunshine, the spine of a sea urchin or the spoke of a wheel. I have no idea what the person who offered "Kukuna" as a name for an Alala was thinking, but there it is. I can't help but see a certain irony in the translation "a ray of sunshine".
Kukuna has attacked a staff member before. Granted, she is a small diminutive woman with a southern drawl, but Kukuna's potential threat is accepted by all. He often enters the hack box while I am cleaning up in there and stares balefully at me. Or, he'll lurk furtively just outside the door, swaying slightly on his perch, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if sizing me up and debating the satisfaction of attacking me versus the risk of taking out the one human who has control over his food pan that day.
So the intern and I took someone's advice and I brought in the giant net with us when we went to go fix the perch in Kukuna's aviary. The net must be considered the scythe of death to these birds because upon glimpsing it, he and his mate, who housed right next to him in a separate chamber of the aviary, went nuts. Their screams exploded in our ears the second we entered. Answering shouts came from adjacent aviaries as the other crows expressed their solidarity with the embattled pair.
I climbed up the secured ladder and re-aligned the loose perch to the bracket that attaches it to the wall. I fumbled in my pocket for a screw and washer to drill into the branch when Kukuna ceased his cawing and let out his charlie brown voice. This vocalization sounds a lot like the adults in the charlie brown cartoons, kinda like a tuba in the other room. When its coming from a small black bird, it's utterly hilarious. Even though I suspect Kukuna was breaking out the big bad voice in order to tell us to go to hell, he lost all credibility with me, and became ever so adorable. He continued to warble to us as we packed up and left the aviary. I hope our exit gave him the confidence that he had succeeded in chasing us away with his scary voice.