Elena, the creator of the account, said its roots go way back. Her fascination with birds started with a budgie. "When I was six, my grandma brought me an empty juice box; there was a little blue baby budgie on the bottom of it," she told Bored Panda. "I fell in love immediately and named him Kesha. He quickly became mine and my mother's best friend, although it took some time for him to get used to us." Her mom then taught him to talk and they spent a lot of time teaching him new phrases and just chatting.
"I was in a music school and used to play piano at home a lot, and if in a cage, he would sing along to some Bach's Inventions (Bach was his favorite), or just fly to me, and I'd play with him on my head or on the piano's keys," Elena recalled. "When my mom got us a computer, he'd fly to the keyboard and 'help' her with tapping. We had the strongest bond, and I still miss him a lot."
In high school, Elena won the city's university psychology competition. She thinks it's mostly because she came up with a 'school leaders’ classification' (which was a final task) based on different birds' appearance and behavior. "The idea came certainly because of Kesha. Not that I was a school leader myself, but I sure had great fun inventing the classification (New Zealand Kea was on top of it), and I also got my first USB card as a prizeSmiling face with smiling eyes."
Now, there's a pair of pigeons nesting in the tree right in front of Elena's balcony, and she's having fun watching them. "I recently moved to an area with many trees and birds, and I'm happy to have them near me."
"In the future, I would love to have an outdoors aviary with several birds, preferably, adopted, not bought. Maybe even a sanctuary, like in Paul Gallico's 'Thomasina.'"
Birds are Elena's friends. The source of her joy. And she created this account on a day when she felt overwhelmed with political events and the pandemic. She was going through some bird photos in her gallery and thinking: 'I need to make a thread of threatening birds on Twitter.' But her second thought was: "Why just a thread, let's go nuts and make it a whole account!"
"The main idea was about something little and cute, yet brave, independent, and smart," she explained. "I wanted to express myself somehow," she said. It's certainly refreshing to see someone create a '... with threatening auras' account not just because the internet is doing it.
When she is going through pictures she can possibly feature on the account, Elena falls immediately for the ones "where a bird seems to be up to some mischief, when they give that special evil look that only a creature with a beak could give, or when they seem to play with some, er, non-playable objects (I'm certainly not encouraging putting your bird in such situations)."
"I also love when there's some bizarre aura, like in one of the photos, where the geese are transported late in the evening in the back of the car. Who put them there? Where are the geese going? Are we to see the Age of Geese? Questions." She thinks threatening auras come to some birds naturally; they just have the innate ability to look menacing.
"While running the account I discovered that the cockatiels do really have a tendency to give you the evilest looks all of a sudden," Elena explained. "But in most cases, the threatening aura comes with a context. We all know the little creature won’t cause any harm (except for the black palm cockatoo, who can crack a walnut with his beak), but in some situations, it looks like it sure will. That's why I love that photo (sent by my follower) where a woman unsuccessfully tries to cover her head, protecting it from an innocent white budgie sitting on her back.
Elena also wanted to address the people who watch funny bird videos and want to buy a bird. "Please know that these are the result of a long bond-building process between an owner and a bird, or, in some cases, just professional training," she highlighted. "I've read some heart-breaking stories about the birds being abandoned or mistreated just because they were not so funny or close to human as on the internet. They don't have to perform as we wish, but they can be our closest friends if we give them space, time, and kindness."
To learn more about the issue, check out this comic by Jenny Jinya.
