Life with My Parrots

Besides the scratching, scurrying critters living inside the walls of my house and the little bugs flying up my nose and crawling around on the ceilings, I live with two other critters. It is my sole responsibility to keep them alive, and I do this by feeding and giving them water daily, buying food at the grocery store weekly and at the pet store monthly, and watching them for signs that they're getting sick or bleeding to death. Most days, we all talk and sing to each other; we dance together, usually, but not always, to music; and periodically I video them and take photographs of them.

Yes, they're parrots. Carmen, my female African Gray will be 19 years old in November this year--somewhat young for an African Grey that could live 60 years, and Pookie, my male cockatiel, will be 18 years old--very very old for a cockatiel!

My boyfriend Lew bought Carmen when I lived with him. She was 7 weeks old, half-grown. For several years I walked around with her standing on my shoulder drinking apple juice from a paper cup. After I moved away from Lew, he would sometimes let me take care of her when he went out of town on business trips. Lew never wanted me to teach her anything. Once while I had her, I taught her to howl like Wolf Man Jack ("OUWOOOOO Wolf Man Jack!"). A month after he returned and retrieved Carmen he said to me at work one day, "Oh by the way, what did you do to my bird?"
"What's the matter with her?" I asked.
"Nothing, but she howls like Wolf Man Jack!"

Pookie

 After I moved into my own apartment, I bought Pookie. My friend who raised birds went with me. We stood outside the pet store looking at the hanging cage full of baby cockatiels. "One of them will choose you," my friend said. None of them chose me. I had to grab a screaming Pookie and pull him out.

In 1996 Lew was preparing for his assignment in Malaysia and I was hired as a technical writer in a company up near Milwaukee and preparing to move. He couldn't take Carmen with him, but didn't want to give her to me, either, probably because I told him that once he gave her to me, I wasn't giving her back.

Pookie and I went on to Milwaukee, then to Ohio. Lew put Carmen into a bird-sitting home where she spent 1-1/2 years standing on the man's shoulder throughout the day. Lew and I both ended up back in the same Florida town at the same time. Lew had to leave town again and asked me to take care of Carmen, but he wasn't ready to let me have her for good. I hadn't seen her since leaving for Wisconsin. For me, it was a joyful reunion. For her--well, she sat in her cage burping loud rolling belches all the way home. That bird-sitting man she loved so much must have had a serious digestion problem. How many times since then I've had to explain to someone that Carmen must have indigestion, knowing full well birds don't burp, they imitate people burping! I didn't want anyone to think I burped like that.

Lew never came to pick Carmen up when he came back to town, and eventually he gave her to me for good, in exchange for my keyboard and the promise that I would teach him to play it. I had no hope for him--he couldn't even carry a tune with his voice, but he knew something about himself that I didn't know. Today he plays keyboard like a musician! The exchange was beneficial for all of us.

African Grays are supposed to have the intelligence of a 5-year-old child. I'm convinced Carmen wants me to believe she's retarded. When I first brought her home with me after her year in the bird-sitting home, she spoke in full sentences in the mornings, before she knew I was awake. She used to say, "You are sooo beeeyooteeeful," when I would hold her against my body and stroke the feathers on her head backwards. She used to help me call the dog in from the backyard with a man's whistle and a loud gutteral "HEY!" in a man's voice. And she used to say, "OH MY GOD!" Now she sings and says "WOW" and a few token words and phrases to let me know she knows what's going on. 

Parrots don't smile or have any facial expressions, and when they talk, you have to look closely to see their beaks move. 

Carmen in Ohio, 200

One night around midnight I went outside to see where the far-away crows were. I didn't know crows called at night. All was quiet. Turns out the far-away crows were inside, namely Carmen. Another night I heard a loud repeated runny-nose sniffing, like someone with a bad cold, and ran from window to window to see who might be breaking into my apartment. It was Carmen. That was the first I realized I was constantly snuffling from allergies. 

Life with Carmen has not been easy for either of us. She's tried to kill me a few times when I had the telephone in my hand. Once I screamed a werewolf movie scream into the phone when I answered the call of a man who wanted to hire me as a writer for his company. I had to hang up and clean up the blood from eight bites on both hands and down my neck and back before I called the man back and got the job. Guess he felt sorry for me, or for himself, as he had to have lost his hearing over that episode. Now I never answer the phone when she's out of the cage. She's bitten me hard enough a few times to make me seriously consider popping her in the microwave and eating her for dinner.

She's had two major surgeries on the end of her back, which nearly put all four of us (both birds, my rottie and me) out on the street. I thought she would die both times and required long hospitalizations. 

Carmen After First Surgery

Before both surgeries, she looked ready for the stewpot, having pulled out most of her feathers. She was fully feathered again until February of this year when my rottie Savannah died and she started pulling out feathers again. I think she misses Savannah always sitting in front of her cage staring at her, waiting for her to throw out bird pellets to her. Lew says Carmen needs therapy. I call her a "lyric soprano bare-chested feather-picker." 

Bare-chested feather-picker

Even though Pookie is the cutest, smartest bird I've ever known, I'm the only one who knows it. He won't sing any of his songs if someone else besides me is in the room. He and I are in a segment on "Planet's Funniest Animals." It took me three months to video it by myself. While he sits on my shoulder, I say, "Pookie, how does the rooster go?" He looks at me, then bows his head down low, raises it up high and goes, "er  er-er  er-errrr." So cute! 

Pookie taught Carmen to play peek-a-boo, and they used to play it together with each other when I wasn't in the room. Pookie isn't safe around Carmen. Once when he landed on her cage, she bloodied his feet, and another time she tried to kill Pookie when they were both sitting on different levels of a perch.

Life with birds doesn't give the same return of affection that a dog gives. Still, my parrots give me the opportunity to take care of lives besides my own, and the illusion that another human is in the house speaking in what sounds like my voice coming through a megaphone: "Wanna take a bath?" "Apple." "Carmeeena!---What!" "WOW!" And Pookie's "Eye-Eye. Eee ooo waiter" when I'm leaving the house. He can't pronounce syllables.

As I write this just before 1 a.m., an owl calls in its deep-throated voice outside my window in the live oak tree. If Carmen were in this room, she'd wake me up with owl calls in the morning. 

I found this accurate description online of the struggle to give a bird medicine through a syringe--been there, done that!

HOW TO MEDICATE A BIRD: (author unknown)

Occasionally, we find it necessary to medicate our feathered friends. Here are some pointers to help you with this task.

FIRST APPLICATION:
Retrieve the bird from the cage.
Set the bird on a table and hold its head by carefully grasping the neck where it joins the lower jaw, or mandible.
With your other hand, grasp the medicine syringe and place the tip into the left side of the bird’s mouth.
Depress the plunger and squirt the medicine toward the back of the bird’s throat.
Wipe excess medicine from the bird’s beak.
Place the bird back in the cage.

SUBSEQUENT APPLICATIONS:
Attempt to retrieve the bird from the cage.
Apply bandages as necessary to wounds on your hands and arms.
Retrieve the bird from its new hiding place under the coffee table.
Carefully immobilize the bird’s head to prevent further tissue damage to your body.
Attempt to break the “Vulcan Death Grip” and remove the bird’s feet from your hand.
Apply more bandages and a strong analgesic cream to the new wounds on your hands and arms.
Immobilize the bird by carefully wrapping it in a bath towel.
Watch in amazement as the bird “morphs.” Its head and tail will probably swap position,
putting your tender flesh in mortal danger again.
Hold the bird snugly in its terrycloth prison.
Grasp the medicine syringe.
Try to stop trembling in fear and pain.
Place the tip of the syringe into the left side of the bird’s mouth.
Ignore the crushed tip.
Depress the plunger and squirt the medicine toward the back of the bird’s throat.
Wipe excess medicine out of your eyes.
Release the bird and squirt medicine in the general vicinity of its face.
 Some medicine may actually go into the mouth.
The rest will be absorbed by osmosis.
 
Shoo the bird back to the cage.

 Spend the rest of the day attempting to regain the bird’s affection with yummy snacks and new toys.