Believe me or not, before I got Pao our Yorkie, hubby actually suggested a cockatoo thinking it would be easier to take care compared to a dog. Good thing I have done some reading and told him it is the other way round. Parrots are way more work than a dog because they are more intelligent and they have wings and beaks! They know they don't have to listen to you when they don't want to.Anyways, I am more of a dog person than a bird person although I do love birds and other animals as well. That being said we have did get a budgie and she was spoilt. She comes out of her cage in the morning, we don't get to sleep in because she squawks like no ones business and she doesn't go in to her cage till late night and she found a way to taunt us by not wanting to go in to her cage and flying away fast from us. She chases my yorkie and Pao is scared as hell of her because when she gets him, she will peck his nose hard especially when he is sleeping! She will sneak to him and peck! She chews the wall too and my curtain and furniture and she doesn't like the toys I bought her. I can imagine if a small budgie can do that much damage, a cockatoo/moluccan will be 10 times more. Not to mention they pluck their feathers out when they are bored.

Good choice, LOL. However, I had 2 Moluccans, one for 20 yrs and one for 18 and they never chewed or plucked their feathers. Maybe b/c one of them was too busy eating the walls when he got himself out of the cage, and my female was busy watching him:p . They literally could have chewed down an entire house if you gave them awhile. Although, they'd probably get bored chewing on just ONE house, so they'd chew their way out of your house and go on to the neighbor's:eek: . I kid you not.

And yes, they know they don't have to behave, b/c when you come in and see what they've done, your screaming and histrionics are GREAT entertainment for THEM, LOL.

Haha! When I got my first cockatoo, my girl, she was extremely shy (she was a wild-caught, quarantined bird, who'd had at least 2 previous owners), and I took several days off work so I could be with her when I first brought her home. She made absolutely NO sound at all for a couple of days, and then I was in the back of the house and heard this low, sweet whistle sort of....I thought "Oh what a pretty sound! I hope she does that all the time".....OMG...the day after, I was in the back of the house and I hear this SHRIEKING coming from the living room, that sounded like somene was being MURDERED:eek: .......and that's the beauty of the cockatoo, LOL:D . On the other hand, I raised lovebirds for awhile, and THOSE little guys can be EXTREMELY noisy when they want to go to bed or when it's time to be fed in the morning!!!