A Verge writer recounts how his family's pet Senegal parrot, Kiyo, has repeatedly damaged his keyboards by climbing onto his desk from a nearby cage and pecking at keys, most recently pulling the spacebar off his MacBook Air's built-in keyboard in mid-July. The anecdote illustrates a common hazard for pet owners who work from home in close quarters with curious animals, and prompted the writer to rethink his desk setup to protect his equipment.

The writer, who lives in a two-bedroom Los Angeles flat with his wife, child, two dogs and Kiyo the parrot, notes his workspace sits just a few feet from the bird's cage. He recalls a similar incident a decade earlier when his chihuahua chewed nearly two dozen keys off a Razer Anansi keyboard. Rather than a lesson learned, the recent spacebar theft instead pushed him to switch to using his HyperX Alloy Origins mechanical keyboard, connected via his monitor's USB hub, as a more parrot-resistant alternative to typing directly on the laptop.