Since we got Basil about 2 weeks ago, he had been sitting on our fingers, sitting with us on the couch - he was finger tamed - WAS!

 

On the weekend, Basil was flying around, flew into the kitchen and landed on the kitchen tap which had cold water running out of it. He seemed intrigued by it, we thought he was going to run under it, but instead he decided to jump into the other sink with soapy sink water which obviously startled him.

 

He was soaking wet the poor little thing, so Damien tried to pick him up so we could dry him a little...and he went pretty psycho. He started darting around the whole house, he would not sit on our fingers and anytime we went near him he would just fly off.

 

He flew off and sat on top of the lamp on the computer desk, which is situated under our wall mounted air conditioner/heater. So we turned the heater on, and he sat there for about 2 hours whilst he dried. So I approached him, wanting him to get on my finger so I can put him in the cage and he flew off again. We could not approach him without him flying off and we could not get him in his cage.

 

In the end, he flew into the bedroom so I put the cage on the bed with the cage door open and closed the bedroom door. About 20 mins later he chirped, so I went in and he was sitting in the cage. So I closed the cage door and brought the cage out to the loungeroom.

 

We figured he was pretty stressed from the sink dunking incident and also Damien trying to catch him to dry him off. So we let him sit in the cage for a few hours. We attempted to get him to sit on our fingers a few times later that day, but he just goes crazy in his cage and flys out, around the house a few times then back into his cage. He just doesn't want to have anything to do with us. He was quiet all Sunday, and for most of yesterday. Only last night did he start to chirp and sing again. He has been eating and drinking as normal.

 

We have not let him out of the cage again since Sunday afternoon, as we thought the flying around and us approaching him stresses him too much. What is our next step to get him to trust us? Do we need to start finger taming from the beginning? When we go him he was fairly tame, but now it seems he has gone backwards and further back past the point of being finger tamed.

 

Any advice would be much appreciated...

 

From a very concerned Fleur and a rather stressed Basil!

I think your right - he was scared senseless, and now you will need to start with basics again. Shouldn't be too hard, he just needs to relearn that you are okay to be around. Try Terri's site for some tips click here

I would say yes that has been imprinted into his mind, and you there was nothing you could have done at that point. Now you have to focus on now and as Lin said start at square 1, it might even take longer. But don't give up . Keep posting questions and updates for sure.