Living inside the parrot cage

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, animals, birds

I've never had a pet bird. Somehow, the thought never appealed to me. Even when a robin or sparrow banged off a window and needed resuscitating, I never tried to keep the revived creature.

Some people want exotic pets; want them enough to break laws to get them. Even when trade in an animal is legal, the constant cost pressure ensures that those who capture wild animals for the "pet" trade are the least qualified. It is amazing that many formerly wild pet animals become affectionate pets. They've typically suffered incredibly, beginning with their capture.

In the case of a blue-and-gold macaw that Nancy Ellis-Bell named Sarah, one foot was lost because it got too tangled in the net, and the captor was impatient. When Sarah became a rescue bird, Nancy was asked to take her in, and she did. The touching story of caring for a parrot so traumatized that she would not tolerate being touched, who had become an infamous biter, but who later came to tell Nancy, at very appropriate times, "Love you," is chronicled in The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog.

A blue/gold is a large bird, two feet tall (0.6 m), weighing about two pounds (0.9 kg), with a beak the size of a child's hand—and capabable of removing said hand. Macaws are intelligent and have distinctive personalities. Many, including Sarah, have a sense of humor, and enjoy laughing, either mimicking human laughter or using the quieter parrot chuckle: "Heh, heh, heh".

Typically, when you hear that chuckle, you know it means, "Gotcha!" The author heard it time and again, as Sarah gradually took over the room, the house, the deck, and the yard. "Did I leave that drawer open?…Oops", "Heh, heh, heh", and you pick up the papers (shredded of course) or underwear (not shredded but well strewn) that was therein. And you didn't leave it open; parrots can open anything without a large metal lock. The birds are easily bored, and their attention span and inquisitiveness is stuck at about three years old. Imagine taking care of a three-year-old who lives for eighty years!

When the author and her husband Kerry took in Sarah, they already had quite a menagerie of dogs and cats. Luckily they lived on a big piece of land, but in a small house: there was somewhere for the other animals to go once Sarah became queen of the house. She had the patience and determination of a glacier. Give her time, and she'll mash you flat.

A year ot two later, in a pet store, Nancy saw two cherry-headed conures for sale, smaller parrots, also wild caught. She couldn't resist taking them home. This began to get like the old joke about "my house is too small", "bring the cow and the pig inside", which goes on until you remove all the animals, and the house doesn't seem so small any more. But this family is still gaining animals even as you read this. The story continues.

The conures needed a different kind of care than Sarah had. Renamed Zach and Zoe, they were also given the run of the house, but not allowed outdoors at first. Zach became a shoulder-sitter, but Zoe, like Sarah, shunned contact. And the only time Zoe flew outdoors, she flew right away, and the family was back to two parrots.

The Bells and their dogs and cats found themselves living in a parrot cage (they never considered keeping Sarah in the cage she came in). Even after Sarah was allowed outside, she spent most of her time indoors, particularly when Nancy went inside. Much of the book relates the slow growth of a relationship that developed, so that Sarah came to trust Nancy almost enough to allow contact. The one time Nancy simply had to grasp Sarah and hurry her inside, the parrot tolerated it amazingly well, only nipping once (and drawing a bit of blood).

But if you've been around a parrot, you know they can be very loud. Much of the author's work is carried out over the phone, and rather early on, the bird shouted over the phone call, "Crap! It's all crap!" It took the author a while to retrain her editors and clients to take the parrot's interruptions in stride, and even laugh at them. Her shrieking and screaming were another matter. This was the typical way Sarah reacted to frustration, and on one occasion, led to a neighbor calling the police, suspecting a domestic violence situation. All was quiet when the police came, but they were a bit bemused at the big bird watching them when they came to the doorway.

Sarah did not live the eighty-plus-year span that is possible for macaws. If I get the timeline right (the chapters are not all in sequence), about five years into this saga she flew quite a bit farther than was usual. She'd been confining her flying to the space from the housetop to the lower branches of some nearby trees. This time, she flew nearly to the top of a hundred-foot pine.

She would not try to come down. Though she flew from pine to pine, particularly in response to efforts to either climb to her or cut the tree down, she never returned to the house or yard, and soon died, probably of exposure.

She was barely buried when Nancy got a call from someone who needed a home for a scarlet macaw. Slightly bigger than a blue-and-gold, these are the largest parrots. This bird, named Will, became a bosom buddy of Zach, the bereft conure. So the present count is two parrots in the Bell household, plus a few dogs that replaced the two they had earlier, who were old and have also passed away. And of course, country cats come and go. (Technical note: the images here are stock photos, not the birds from the book.)

I don't think Sarah really thought she was a dog. She clearly considered herself superior to the two family dogs, and almost totally ignored the cats. She did play tug-of-war with one dog, on one occasion, but having gained possession of the toy, she treated it all as "been there, done that" and didn't repeat.

Through it all, the author has tried to give her animals as good a life as her situation makes possible. Staging one or two "get-away days" with her husband kept the environment from turning into one of unrelenting cabin fever. When you live in a parrot cage, you tend to live by parrot rules. They are ill-inclined to live by your rules, of course!