Parrot Sniffers R Us

Today, after finishing all my chores, I grabbed up one of our chickens, buried my face in its feathers and took a deep sniff....in the name of science.

Yes, yes, I know--WTH?

It started with the on-going fact that I am a part of a LOT of really random Facebook groups...some are because of work, some are because of the farm and some, well some are because I am a very random person.

And if you are my friend on Facebook, it means every once in a while Facebook will recommend one of my random groups to you because I happen to be in it. And so my (mostly) normal friends get suggestions like "HO Scale Model Railroading" (joined for work) or "Guinea Fowl Enthusiasts (joined for farm) or "Paula's Riding Cattle" (for me). When one of my friends pointed out all the weird groups suggested to her because of me today, I decided I should go check out what Facebook suggested for me.

And that's when I found the group "Parrot Sniffers R Us".

Now I am aware that the internet is full of all sorts of people and they have all sorts of strange interests. I am also aware that there are some deep dark corners of the internet full of people whose strange interests I want to know nothing about. But when I found this group, I absolutely could not figure out what kind of strange I had come across.

And with a name like that, I had to know. Was it people smelling parrots? And if so, why? Or was it some strange euphemism? Like they didn't want to have a headline that said "Panty Sniffers R Us?" so they just swapped a few letters about to stay street legal? And as it was a closed group, I couldn't tell what was going on from the outside.

So I joined.

And like many groups, it had a couple questions to ask me before I joined:

1. How many birds do you have?

2. Do you sniff them?

Now, I'm going to admit right now that I joined under somewhat false pretences. I do own a lot of birds, so I was able to honestly answer that. But while I sometimes smell my birds (because when you have this many, you can't help but not), I can't confess I have ever "sniffed" them...and yet here I said yes...still not sure if I admitted to smelling some avian dander or to a weird fetish.

As it turns out, sniffing pet parrots is really a thing (thank GOD it was really sniffing parrots, thank GOD!). As in if you are into parrots, you sniff them because they apparently smell pretty good. And so they used the fact that parrot lovers sniff their birds to give a funny name to a group for sharing parrot stories. Additionally, I learned both from the group and from parrot-owning friends who have chimed in on my online bewilderment, different species apparently have different, distinct aromas. Like cockatoos apparently smell like baby powder. Who knew?

It also turns out that two of my parrot-owning friends concurrently own alpacas and they both shared that those animals smell like popcorn/Fritos. So there, now that is something else you know.

This drama finally ended tonight when I decided that since the Parrot Sniffers R Us had been so kind to welcome me into their group, I needed to actually "sniff" my birds...chickens in this case (but to be fair, they just asked if I owned "birds") and keep up my end of the bargain. So I grabbed up poor Thunder, stuck my head in the feathers of his neck and took a good, deep sniff.

The verdict?

Chickens smell like sandwiches.

And not chicken salad sandwiches either...maybe a nice cold cut on good bread with some lettuce and tomatoes. They emanate a savory scent, with some vegetable overtones and maybe a hint of spice. So yes, a sandwich.