The toy hook to rule them all
It’s important to provide your bird with plenty to do to occupy their brains and beaks. Toys of different types are popular to place inside a cage, but you can also attach them on the outside of a cage or anywhere your bird likes to hang out.
It also helps immensely to rotate items around and introduce new ones frequently. But hanging toys can be a pain for many reasons. It’s awkward to reach inside a cage, especially if it is large, or there are already a lot of toys. Also, it’s often very cumbersome to attach the toy, even with two hands.
Here are some typical hooks used to attach toys, with common ones in the top row.
These hooks have one thing in common: they are infuriating. Among the problems:
- They often take two hands to manipulate, which means two hands jammed in a cage or one inside and one outside
- The opening is too narrow for either the toy or the cage bars
- When unscrewing them, it’s hard to remember which way to turn them
- It takes a long time to screw/unscrew them and often it’s hard to figure out which way to turn it to screw/unscrew
- For an aviary, it’s especially difficult because you only have access to one side of the wire at a time (without an assistant)
I give a special hatred award to the one in the top right, which is not only impossible to use with two hands, it’s also spring loaded for no good reason, adding to the complexity.…
