I'm hypoglycemic, and when I was very underweight the hypoglycemia and low blood pressure "teamed up," and I had more than a few episodes of sudden vasovagal syncope--one minute I'd be feeling sorta hungry, then I'd get distracted, and then I'd fall down and people would call out an ambulance before I was able to come to consciousness and tell them I just needed my Glucotabs.

During this time, my own cockatoo (a rescue, and a velcro bird who's usually on me) started telling me when I was going to have a problem. He could give me a ten-minute lead time, probably by detecting the very beginnings of the onset of the shakes and by feeling my blood pressure through my wrist. Feet like sphygnamometers.

Anyway, I worked with him until we could go anywhere together. We could walk through a crowd of people at Wal-Mart, brushing up against people sometimes, without Gidi moving from his position or taking his attention off of me. I developed some cues, one that told him to focus on me and another that told him he was off-duty and could talk to people and ask kids to pet him. (He loves children.) Very often we would go somewhere and nobody would know there was a parrot in the room until someone--a kid, usually: adults often thought I was carrying a white towel--pointed him out to someone else. We even attended religious services with singing, clapping, and dancing--and everyone was surprised afterward that there'd been a bird there the whole time!

Fortunately, my weight has been over 90 lbs (most of the time) for a while, my blood pressure's back to normal, and I haven't vaso'ed in more than two years. I no longer rely on Gideon to prevent unnecessary 911 calls and embarrassment, so I don't need to have full access with him anymore. But I do keep him trained, just in case it ever happens again.

I do have a personal interest in this.

(Oddly, my friend lives a couple of blocks from me. Her parrot is also a cockatoo, but mine's an Umbrella and hers is a Moluccan.)

Tucker