Shoulder chicken

I was sitting on the rocking chair with my laptop on my lap, doing 'net stuff in the morning.  HW had just left for work.  My chair was right beside Apples' box (the house chicken).Suddenly, she leapt up onto my knee with a big flap.  Very startling, and extremely uncharacteristic.  Wow!  Ok, you're in the mood for a little cuddle?  I made room for her on my lap.Shocked and delighted, of course I was nowhere near my camera, or phone.  But I did have my laptop on my lap.  I opened Siri and asked her to take a picture of me, and she obliged.  Siri has never come in handy before ("Siri, open Art folder" - "Alright, opening Google Earth"), but this time - clutch.Lap chicken!I barely got a pic of that before she started climbing me, like a kitten (What the!?), scrabbling up, up, until she summited my shoulder.Siri, are you getting this?Whereupon, she settled right down like A: she planned to stay awhile, and B: this was totally normal, like we do this every day. WHAT?  THE?Sure, she's lived in the house for a while, HW sings and talks to her (pretty often), we occasionally try to pet her (and get growled at for it), and she really came out of her shell when Lily visited.  But day after day, she spends all her time in her box or on her sheet of paper.  We have NOT made any active attempts to change her behaviour or "train" her.  Certainly not to play parrot.She has never before shown any inclination to reach out to us.Now, she was all cuddles.Since it seemed like she was staying, I put her on my other shoulder, got a towel in position, and put her back.This made me more comfortable.  I didn't trust she'd also suddenly got house trained.What are you thinking?  It's really something to look her in the eye, at about 3 inches, and she's looking back with that little black eye.Long neck. Longer neck.She got real relaxed, dozing, doing a little grooming, leaning on my ear (oh, I'm on your shoulder? So what? Can't stop grooming) .Then, she got really, really cuddly.  And she's so soft and warm.  HW had a theory, when I called him later ("You're not going to believe this...).  Just before he left in the morning, he'd asked me when I was going to put Apples back out in the world.  He figures she heard that, and wanted to put a stop to that line of thinking.You're not going to let him come between us, are you?She stayed for a very long time.  Like almost two hours.  Ultimately I got too hungry to sit any longer, and got up and started walking around, with her still there.  She didn't seem to enjoy surfing,  though, so I set her back down, and she ate, drank, and settled in for a big nap.  She had a really big day.Did you ever?   A CHICKEN!