(Editor’s Note: Once every couple years I post as my Welcome Column on the web page of the California Bluegrass Association the story of my wife’s bird. I keep coming back to the narrative because it’s got a solid moral that’s worth throwing out for consideration. RC)
Once, when my youngest son Peter was just a little guy, he was playing ball inside the house and broke a window. I’d been out in my shop and didn’t hear the crash and Peter, not wanting to deal with the situation, just skipped over to a friend’s house to play. When I found the broken window a while later and confronted my son, he readily admitted to being the culprit but didn’t see as how he’d been the least bit dishonest by not telling me about it. I remember so vividly sitting him down and explaining, slowly and methodically about “lies of omission”. I was adamant that having a truth and withholding it was just as serious an offense as telling a lie. It was as much a sermon as an explanation–I was that convicted by what I was saying. Peter got it. His brother Phillip, who’d been listening, got it too. We were all on the same page—you don’t hold back information when you know it’s important. Period.
Now let me tell you the story of our parrot’s escape and rescue.
The story actually starts about six years ago. The evening dishes are done and my wife and I are sitting in front of the TV watching NOVA– a one hour special on birds…..parrots specifically. Big ones, little ones, caged, wild. Mid way through the show we’re introduced to Alex, the famous African Grey parrot at the University of Arizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dr. Irene Pepperberg has taught this bird to communicate, actually to read, and as Lynn and I watch we’re mesmerized by the intelligence of this tiny creature. The narrator tells us that Alex (Avian Language Experiment) has the IQ of a two-year-old child. Amazing.
The next morning Lynn and I exchange e-mails from our respective offices at work.
Me: Hey, what did you think of those parrots last night? Pretty incredible. Ever thought you’d like to have a parrot for a pet.
She: No. We have all the pets we (which actually means ME because I take care of them) can handle.
Me: Ah, come on now, admit it. Wouldn’t it be cool to have one of those African Greys? “It’ll be more like having a little feathered friend than another pet. How hard could it be to take care of a little bird? I’ll bet they don’t eat much.
She: No more pets, Rick. Not even little feathered ones. No.
I backed off, but that was just the first volley. My wife loved animals and I knew she would get a kick out of owning an African Grey parrot; I just had to help her realize it. This took a week and a half. On the way home from the breeder, (a woman whose life was so obviously and completely interwoven with the lives of her birds that it should have given me some pause), we named the bird Albert. It was just a little bit of a thing, maybe two-thirds of its adult size, but by the time we pulled into our driveway the parrot had pierced me on the finger and on the wrist with its beak, drawing blood in both places. (With parrots, which have needle sharp beaks that can achieve 2000 psi (pounds of pressure per square inch), the word is “pierce”, not bite.) The parrot didn’t pierce Lynn at all, though he had plenty of chances. I remember thinking that was a little odd.
And so began what slowly and inexorably grew into one of the truly dark periods of my life. I say slowly because the bond between Lynn and the parrot didn’t form overnight. Nor did the bird’s obsessive, all-consuming hatred of me. Days turned into weeks and I still found myself amused by his antics. Weeks turned to months and amusement turned to indifference. Gradually the bird began imitating birds he would hear out in the yard. Jays, mocking birds, doves. He did doves so realistically that sometimes they would coo back to him. Then, roughly six months after Albert moved in, he began to talk. The darkness began to settle in quickly from there. His first word was Doh, ala Homer Simpson. The next word was Albirdio. Yes, the African Grey parrot had renamed himself. It was chilling….I remembered with smothering irony what I’d said to Lynn six months ealier….’It’ll be more like having a little feathered friend than another pet.’
I began to fully grasp the magnitude of what lay in store for our household a couple months after Albirdio began talking. I was in the kitchen preparing the evening meal when I suddenly heard a commotion in the family room. As I rushed in, I saw our dog, Alex, running in circles around the room, knocking over a lamp, up-ending an end table, and barking hysterically. And there, on his perch, safely above the fray, was the African Grey parrot, repeating, in precisely my voice, over and over, “Alex, do you wanna go for a walk? Alex, do you wanna go for a walk?” And there, standing in the threshold of the family room, I remembered what the MIT researcher had said—African Grey parrots have the intellect of a two year old child. And then in a sudden rush, I remembered every unpleasant experience I’d ever had with a toddler…..two to three year old humans whose universe revolves solely around them, who have not yet learned right from wrong, whose happiness depends entirely on pushing the buttons of those around them. And I realized with a dark shudder that Albirdio was intellectually a toddler and that he would remain a toddler for his entire parrot life, which could last as long as eighty-five years. This sociopath, this relentless pusher of buttons, this ruthless piercer of human flesh, would out live me.
A few months later, in the middle of the night, one of the smoke detectors downstairs went off. I got up groggily, went down stairs and found that, rather than a fire, we had a detector in the family room with a failing battery. I got a ladder, replaced the battery and went back to bed. (The alarm couldn’t have been on for more than 30 seconds.) Two nights later, again in the middle of the night, the smoke detector went off again. But this time, as soon as I turned on the lights downstairs, the detector went silent. I found the ladder and checked out the alarm. The battery looked fine. The connection seemed okay. I went back to bed. No sooner had I fallen asleep than the alarm went off again. This time when I trundled back down stairs I didn’t turn the light on immediately….instead, I listened to the sound of the alarm. It wasn’t coming from the family room’s smoke detector at all; it was coming from the bird’s room, which didn’t have a smoke detector. I shuddered. It had taken less than thirty seconds for Albirdio to memorize the sound of the smoke detector alarm two nights before, less than thirty seconds to master yet another one of my buttons.
In the months that followed Albirdio taught himself many other sounds, all of which had one thing in common….each sound possessed the power to “activate” me. I’d be outside and the phone would ring inside. We’d be watching TV and the doorbell would ring. Eventually he even got Lynn’s voice down….”Hey, Rick”….and I’d go from upstairs to downstairs, downstairs to upstairs.
All the while the parrot was honing his sadistic skill sets, he was getting closer and closer to my wife. Albirdio loved her. She loved the bird, bought him the best of everything….toys, cage, food. They would coo at each other…..sometimes he would even regurgitate his food for her—the ultimate show of affection from a bird. And over time they developed their rituals. When Lynn would shower and put on her makeup in the morning, they would call to one another, have what seemed like conversations, sing songs together—Jingle Bells was their favorite, she singing the words, Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, he doing his chicken imitation, Cluck cluck cluck, cluck cluck cluck, cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck. Later, before leaving for work, Lynn and the bird would prepare his breakfast in the kitchen—the freshest of fruits and vegetables, but also cheese and pasta, basically anything he showed a fancy to. On the weekends the parrot would ride around on her shoulder as she did her housework mimicking the sound of the vacuum cleaner.
When I complained about her bird, Lynn would explain patiently, as if to a child, that he was just a tiny, innocent little bird, less than twelve ounces, she would say. I was a grown man, an adult, surely I could accept his “little birdie nature”. And then, for good measure….”Remember, it was you and not me who wanted this bird. Now that he’s my bird, I have a commitment to him. A lifetime commitment. Learn to live with it.”
A turning point for the parrot and I came in the winter of 2000. Lynn’s father, Tony, died and my wife flew back to New York for the funeral. I was left in charge of taking care of the animals—the two dogs, the three cats, the four fish and the African Grey parrott. The first several days the bird was okay….in fact, better than okay since he’d stopped talking and chirping the morning that Lynn left. He seemed depressed. But somehow it was like he knew when it was time for Lynn to return home. The morning of her return Albirdio was as noisy as ever, and when I passed near his cage while vacuuming, he debuted a brand new insult…..”You little f_ _ _ er” he said, and in my wife’s voice. I naturally replied in kind, and then Albirdio repeated the epithet, this time louder and with feeling. I went on with my housecleaning. I wasn’t going to argue with this bird.
Around noon it was time to feed the parrot and change his water….Lynn had left exacting instructions on what I was to serve him each day. After giving Albirdio his apple slices, seeds, slice of Swiss cheese, grapes, pasta (with Romano cheese), etc., etc., I reached in his cage to get his water dish. In a blur, he swooped down from his perch and caught the tip of my right index finger. The needle-sharp beak went in under the nail and came out at the cuticle. The nail peeled off. Blood spurted. ”You little f_ _ _ er”, said the African Grey Parrott.
I’ve told this story to many people, and a good number of them have asked what I did to the bird after he slashed my finger open. ‘If I’d been you I’d have killed ‘em’ many have said. No, I always say, if you’d been me you wouldn’t have killed the bird, because, if you’d been me, you’d have been married to Lynn and you wouldn’t have laid a finger on him.
To say that the finger incident was hurtful to the relationship Albirdio and I shared would be like saying that Hitler’s invasion of Poland caused a ripple of controversy in Europe. The battle lines had been drawn, and during the years that followed, it was a cold war, but a war nonetheless. As he grew into a mature living thing, Albirdio expressed his “little birdie nature” in more and more sophisticated ways….always finding new avenues for showing affection to Lynn, always looking for new tricks to show his feelings for me. For my part, I began to research African Greys on the Internet. Parrots, I learned, were the smartest of all birds, African Greys the smartest of all parrots. The smarter the animal, the greater chance of neurosis—true in birds, true in people. And Greys were one-person pets….the closer they grew to a single individual, the more antagonistic they became toward everyone else. Especially those with whom, in their twisted little birdie minds, they were in competition.
Then, in the fall of 2003, a miraculous and wonderous thing happened —Albirdio disappeared. It was a Sunday afternoon. A former employee of mine and her husband and two children stopped by in Jamestown to see us on their way home from a camping trip. We showed them around the property then sat in our family room and chatted for about an hour. The bird was unusually talkative that day—normally he says nothing when strangers are around but he was impatient that they leave. (Did I mention he hates all people except Lynn?) His cage door was open, as was Lynn’s practice when we were home, but Albirdio stayed inside. When our friends announced they needed to be headed home, Lynn and I walked them out to the parking compound. The Grey was in his cage, with the door open, and when we walked out onto the deck and toward the compound, we left the French doors open…..as we had a thousand times before.
Ten minutes later when Lynn and I returned into the house, the bird was gone. Vanished. “Birdio, where are you? Birdio.” Lynn went from room to room, calling. Then she went through the house a second time, still calling, “Birdio, where are you? Birdio” but now panic was beginning to well up in her voice.
For the next three hours we searched….the house, outside, back in the house, finally in stupid places, drawers, underneath the couch, behind the refrigerator. As night fell I laid out the possible scenarios as humanely as I could to my wife. The bird hopped out of his cage and: 1) was grabbed by one of the three cats—they were terribly frightened of the bird (as everyone but Lynn was) but maybe, just maybe, they’d finally had enough of Albirdio); 2) walked out the open door to the deck and was grabbed by a hawk or other bird of prey—there were certainly plenty around; or 3) walked out onto the deck and just flew away. The last scenario required that Albirdio’s wings were grown back sufficiently since his last clipping. We didn’t know whether that was the case; neither of us remembered when he’d last been clipped by the vet. But Lynn was betting on scenario three, and it upset her all the more because it meant that the bird would be somewhere out there in the dense forest just off the deck. A forest with hawks and owls and foxes and bobcats and coyotes and even an occasional mountain lion. Carnivores to whom an African Grey parrot, while not a filling meal, would surely be a tasty one.
Lynn bundled up and went out one more time that night with a flashlight. I sat there reading, feeling guilty for letting her go out alone, but knowing that if we couldn’t find him in daylight, we sure weren’t going to find him in the dark. That night she cried herself to sleep. As much as I hated the nasty, neurotic, vicious, ill-tempered parrot, I’d have given anything for him to suddenly re-appear unharmed. That’s how much I love my wife.
The next day Lynn called me several times at work. Called to tell me he hadn’t come home….that she’d ran an add in the paper…..posted a message on the community bulletin board, called the Humane Society. She sounded terrible. I didn’t know what to expect when I came home from work that night. She and the dogs greeted me as I pulled into the parking compound….her eyes were red and swollen, but she forced a little smile. I could see she’d begun the process of getting through her loss. Before dinner we went out and hunted some, both knowing without admitting that we were now looking for the remains of Albirdio. After an hour, we went inside and didn’t mention the bird the rest of the evening. The next day, about mid morning, I got a brief e-mail from Lynn.
–Please don’t even think about getting me another bird. I’m finished with having a bird. This is just way, way too painful.—
We know each other so well. I had already begun thinking about another bird, maybe a Cockateel …..certainly not another African Grey. I was rid of the feathered, evil one.
That evening when I came home Lynn was doing better than the night before. “Shall we go out and look around for a while,” I asked. “No,” she said, “I’ve been out searching half the day. He’s not out there. He’s gone. I just hope he’s not lost somewhere and can’t get home. It breaks my heart to think of him lost and all alone.” We went to bed early that night. Unlike most nights, Lynn fell asleep first. I’m sure she was exhausted by all the hoping and looking and worrying she’d been doing. Me, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was feeling too excited at the thought of being a birdless family again….too satisfied with the events of the last couple days. Man, I had every right to feel great about the bird being gone. I was perfectly justified. No, I wasn’t gloating, I was feeling exactly the way I should be feeling. And I hadn’t done ANYTHING to cause this. Whatever happened to the bird, I had nothing to do with it. NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. My hands were clean.
But still I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up, poured a glass of wine and went out on the deck and got comfortable on a recliner. There below me was our pasture, and beyond that, Whiskey Creek, and then the steep side of the canyon running up to the ridge and our property line. Totally canopied by towering oak trees, a forest, dark and beautiful and totally still. After just a sip of wine and the warm Indian summer night air, my eyes started to blink shut. Then suddenly, the sound of a far away dove. Then another. Coooo. My mind fought back to consciousness, eyes blinked open…. Coooo. And then it hit me–doves don’t coo at night. Now I was totally awake. No, I thought, this can’t be happening. Obviously, I mumbled to myself, SOME doves do coo at night. Coooo.
I got up suddenly. I need to go to bed, I thought. This is ridiculous, I’m beginning to hear things. I opened the door and had one foot in the house. “You little f_ _ _ _ er.” It was so faint, so distant as to be almost no sound at all. Maybe, I thought, it wasn’t.
A moment later, I was in bed with the covers pulled up. I was ready to go to sleep. Tired. Got to sleep. I closed my eyes and saw Albirdio, high up in a tree in the forest, lost and all alone. Like Lynn had said earlier, “lost and all alone.” Good, I thought. Perfect place for him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer parrot. And it’s not my fault. Besides, the hateful little bundle of feathers is being digested right this very moment….in the stomach of one of the cats. Or maybe being shared by a mama hawk and all her chicks. I didn’t hear anything out there. I couldn’t have, the bird couldn’t have lasted this long if it did fly off. And what if I did hear Albirdio in the forest? Who knows that I heard him? Nobody. I’m guiltless. Not my problem. I squeezed my eyes shut. Got to sleep. I have got to fall asleep……And then, from way, way back….so far back in my mind and in years it was as faint as Albirdio’s profanity….I could hear the explanation to my little boy after he’d broken the window and not told me. Peter got it, he understood. Did I?
It took a 20-foot extension ladder, a 12-foot pruning pole, the help of one of our neighbors, three flashlights and a floodlight, rope, duct tape, a canoe paddle, a towel, and three hours to rescue the bird. Lynn had been right. Albirdio had flown into the forest and had gotten lost. It had flown across the pasture, down to the creek, up the other side to the ridgeline and then into a giant pine tree on our neighbor’s property. We learned from Janice, our neighbor, that she’d seen him up in her tree the morning before last. So Albirdio had taken off, gotten lost, landed and just stayed put—that’s’ what had saved him. And somehow I’d heard him from a quarter of a mile away. And somehow in the dense oak and pine and scrub, among hundreds and hundreds of trees, Lynn had found him way up high sitting on a branch. “Doh”, he’d said to her when she shined the flashlight up there. “Doh.”
Lynn says that after his ordeal the bird’s personality changed. He’s sweeter, she says, gentler. I don’t see it.