Jinx the Parrot’s First Appearance in Dave Womach’s Magic Show

It was a last minute decision, and I sure as heck wasn’t the one to make it!

You see, we were loading and preparing for the show as always and we’d been doing so for 3 days before our shows for the weekend. They were in Ormond Beach, Florida, about an hour away from where we live in Orlando. Our normal flock members were loaded up and ready to go when Dave said to me, “Did you load up Jinx?” well… of course I didn’t… he isn’t in the show… in fact, all three macaws were happily in aviaries ALL to themselves in the backyard.

“Lets try him and see how he does in rehearsal and if he does well, we can put him in the show.” Dave told me. I figured it probably wouldn’t happen so I loaded him up and off we went.

I have to admit, I was pretty excited to see how Jinx would do. Although he has always been a freestyle flyer, he has never been around stage lights, sound or technicians and especially not audiences.

I brought him out while all the prop pushing, stage teching and sound was booming in the theater. He sat in the audience chairs with me and to my surprise… nothing. No reaction to any of the hustle and bustle at ALL. What? What was going on? I mean, Jinx literally poofed up his feathers like a baby and sat and watched the chaos on stage without so much as a nerve twitching.

Normally… it takes at least some easing into with most birds to get used to the stage techs, the sound and the lighting and the huge props all individually. But Jinx was fine with ALL of it at once. Fortunately, this was a smaller theater and there were no “moving lights” which is probably the hardest thing to desensitize show birds to since anything moving radically overhead pretty much is instinctive to be afraid of because that is what predators would move like.

The hope was that Jinx would fly in to Dave from the back of the audience but once we really looked at the theater layout, we realized it was a constant descend from the back to the front and I thought it would be better to start Jinx closer so he didn’t have to descend in the dark.

So we did and he flew from me to Dave which he used to. He did GREAT in rehearsals and when it came to show time… it was NO different. Probably the easiest time we have ever had adding a bird to the show!

But he really seemed to love it and got to hang out backstage a ton. He loved flying around all the props back stage before the show, too. The different set of challenges was a nice enrichment for him. I’m thinking the rest of the birds will LOVE working in the circus show!

To learn more about Dave’s show check out his website at http://www.David-Davinci.com!