The Birds of Pandemonium

by Michele Raffin

  He recovered sufficiently to speak. “Michele, you have more than one hundred birds.”

  “But they’re aviary birds. They have each other. I want a bird like Amigo.”

  “Amigo hates us both. You want a bird like that?”

  Tom had a point. Amigo had never warmed to anyone but Nick and the occasional attractive female visitor, to whom he’d blurt out, “I love you!”

  “I want a bird who will be a real companion. I’d like to have the type of relationship with a bird that Nick has with Amigo.”

  I heard a familiar sigh. Tom said he had just one request. “Please find a bird that will not call me names.”

  I agreed quickly, knowing that I’d really have no control over the situation. If a parrot names a human, that becomes the person’s name, be it silly, unsuitable, or profane. Parrots set their own rules—a lesson I was about to relearn over and over again.

  Some months passed. I knew that I couldn’t go searching for such a bird. It would have to choose me, the way Amigo set his little cap for Nick. It might take a while, since I was no longer in close contact with as many adoptable birds. I had cut out my volunteer work at the humane society. Being on-site resulted in too many new occupants for our aviaries: pheasants, chukar, and still more doves. Plus, it was counterproductive to spend hours feeding birds and cleaning cages there when I had so much of the same kind of work at home with all our adoptees.

  “Please help us,” came the call from a shelter one day. “We’re shorthanded for feeding baby birds.” Well, who can resist babies? I packed a tuna sandwich and went to dropper-feed rescued hatchlings. Time does fly when frantic, relentless little beaks peep commandingly: Feed me! Feed me! After a few hours I was ravenous myself. I was heading toward the employee picnic benches for a lunch break when I heard a voice I didn’t recognize.

  “Come here! Come here!”

  The calling continued. There was no one around, but maybe someone needed help. I followed the sound to an office door down the hall.

  “Come here! Come here!”

  Inside the small office, beside a desk, was a large birdcage containing a magnificent blue and gold macaw. He was about a foot and a half tall, with glossy blue-green feathers, a saffron-colored belly, and black-and-white stripes running across his cheeks. He was clinging to the side bars of his cage, swaying rhythmically back and forth. It looked as if he was dancing.

  “You are gorgeous,” I whispered. I spoke in hushed tones, afraid that I had entered an off-limits area, since the office belonged to security personnel. I was holding my tuna sandwich. The macaw eyed it, looked at me, and then looked back at the food.

  “Yum!” he said.

  I knew it was wrong to feed someone else’s animal, but he was so insistent.

  “Yum, yum!”

  I offered him a crust of bread, which he reached for and downed with gusto. When he was finished, he stretched his body up tall, did his swaying dance move, and hollered, “Some more!”

  The enraptured human obeyed. And thus began my behavior modification engineered by a bird brain more cunning than Batman’s archrival, the Penguin.

  “Yum, yum!”

  After a few more shared morsels, I went back to my lunch and the baby-bird detail. But in the days that followed, the big macaw invaded my dreams. I’d hear him calling, Come here! Come here! The dreams were intense enough to wake me. I had the strong sensation that I needed to save this bird. In those recurring scenarios, I was always too late. I’d burst into the office and find an empty cage.

  When I asked about the backroom macaw, I was told that his future was bleak. He was as dangerous as he was charming. He was kept isolated in the security office like some unexploded bomb. The big, curved beak of the macaw species had evolved strong enough to snap a Brazil nut or a two-inch-diameter branch in the wild. He lured his victims with that beseeching “Come here!” inviting them close enough to inflict a nasty bite. Nothing was known about his past. He had been left in a cardboard box in front of the shelter in the dead of night, with no information enclosed. The person who left him clearly wanted to off-load the bird fast—and without a trace of ownership. He was unadoptable, miserable, and a liability to the shelter. Sound familiar?

  I knew from our experience with Amigo that so-called attack parrots probably had good reasons for their biting habits. Baby parrots, called bappies, explore with their beaks and tongues—not unlike the generations of puppies that have gnawed on my fingers. Some bites are purely accidental. The parrot is securing his balance by putting his beak around the owner’s fingers. If the person pulls away quickly, a deep cut can result. The best way to handle a beak closed on a finger is to push inward or use the other hand to carefully open the beak.

  In adult parrots, some causes of biting are readily understandable to humans: fear, pain (from abuse, neglect, or undiagnosed illness), hormonal flare-ups in adolescent birds, dominance issues. More puzzling to parrot owners is the premeditated sort of “sport” biting that this macaw engaged in, sweetly enticing his victim, then doing a short victory dance once he’d hit home. Parrots’ biting humans, even beloved humans, is so common that there is a lively support industry of parrot trainers and whisperers. There are plenty of sensible ways to curb a biting habit—if you have the courage and patience to stick it out.

  One crucial fact unknown to most new parrot owners is that parrots adore their own noise, along with any reciprocal racket from other birds or humans. Yell at them for shrieking, and they will scream louder at the encouragement. Shout “ouch” when bitten, and they’ll be tickled pink and eager to try it again. To a parrot, a loud, emotional response—even if you turn the air blue with the vilest of curses—is the equivalent of applause and calls for an encore performance. The sooner you learn that and show little or no reaction to biting behavior, the sooner your fingers will heal.

  I put in an application to adopt the handsome, fierce macaw. Yep—fools rush in. I had never adopted a companion “big bird” before. This guy was five times the size of Amigo and stoked with far more aggression. It was daunting, but I felt compelled to deliver him—as best I could—from such deep misery. He was too magnificent an animal to spend what was left of his life in the equivalent of a jail cell. I told the family about submitting the application but didn’t go into detail beyond, “Oh, just another parrot.”

  While I waited for the required inspection of our home to be scheduled, I visited the bird. Daily. When he caught sight of me, he always commanded, “Come here!” As I approached his cage, he’d dance. I brought offerings of nuts and grapes. He was a complete gentleman in the way he took the treats through the bars. This is my bird, I thought to myself. I need to get him out of this place so that he can walk around, get some exercise, some fresh air.

  One day I was whispering to him and sliding small pieces of apple through the bars of his cage. He listened intently to my voice, his eyes riveted on me while he ate the apple slice. Neither of us realized that a man was standing at the door until he spoke and startled us both.

  “I’m Dick. I’m the president of this outfit. And you are . . . ?”

  I explained the situation, telling him that I came every day to visit this blue and gold and loved the bird, but that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to take him home because, nearly a month past my application, the inspection was still pending. Within fifteen minutes, I was okayed to have the macaw as a foster bird. If the home visit went well, it would be a permanent adoption. I cried with relief, thinking that the bad dreams and the bird’s solitary confinement were almost at an end. Dick misinterpreted my tears for worry.

  “The home visit is just a formality,” he reassured me. “If the inspector finds something wrong, we’ll work with you to fix it. That bird is yours.”

  Then he confirmed the subtext of all those nightmares: there had been lively debate on euthanizing the macaw, and soon. “No bird is going to be put to death on my watch,” Dick told me. “Be good to him and he’ll be the most faithful f
riend you’ll ever have.”

  SO BEGAN AN epic test of wills, a contest of “who’s schooling whom” so antic and intense that my friends and family actually kept score. It especially amused my sister Lynn, who is a veterinarian in Atlanta. She called often for updates. Some days the process was downright bloody, until I learned the macaw body language that signaled an imminent bite. Most of the time it was just comical, and I was the prime patsy.

  The bird began his campaign for dominance the moment I unlatched the carrier I had brought him home in. I didn’t have the confidence to touch him yet, so my plan was to put the carrier inside the large cage that was to be his home. I’d open the carrier, then quickly withdraw my hand and close the bigger cage. He’d stay there for a few days, and then we’d see. But the bird had his own plan. I barely had time to pull my hand away from the carrier latch before he burst out of the carrier, beak open in attack mode, eyes glaring. I fled. There was no time to close the cage door. He stepped out, used his beak and claws to climb to the top, and looked down at me like some sort of gaudy-feathered Godzilla. He paced back and forth menacingly, every inch the monster psittacine he was reputed to be.

  “How’s the new bird?” Tom asked when he came home that evening. I stammered something noncommittal, but by that first day, I had all but admitted defeat to myself. Any attempt to handle this macaw would result in my getting badly hurt. I’d been able to shut him in the cage only when he went in to eat and drink. I hadn’t intended a caged life for this bird. I had envisioned him a fairly free-ranging household presence, like Amigo.

  Tom’s question about the “new bird” got me thinking. I didn’t even know the macaw’s name. Doubtless he had one that he answered to. I would need to guess it. I had approximated stray animals’ names before by reading aloud from a book of baby names. I’d watch the animal’s reaction. Using this technique, I’d been able to come close to guessing the right name three times with lost dogs I’d rescued—or at least the dogs seemed comfortable with my approximations. I figured that a bird would react to his name just as a dog did, so I pulled out the baby-names book, sat a safe distance from the cage, and started to read out loud. I began with the z’s and worked my way backward.

  After a few minutes, the bird became intrigued; he seemed to listen intently as I read. When he reacted to a name by breaking into a dance or becoming animated, I put a check mark in the book. My “progress” was quickly undone; the names he liked one day were not the same ones he liked the next. But he did seem to enjoy my reading to him in a soft voice. By day three, I could sit right next to his cage. By day four, right after I had opened the book, he manipulated the lock on his cage and climbed out.

  Fear and shock prickled across the back of my neck as I watched him advance. The bird had been playing me—he could have escaped anytime despite the fact that I’d “locked” him in. It’s possible he needed the security of being in the cage just as much as I needed him inside it. He stunned me further by climbing into my lap. I tried not to panic and focused on reading. He listened for a few minutes, then took the book out of my hands and tossed it on the floor. I had just read the name “Tico.”

  “Tico it is!”

  It would do, anyhow. Over the next couple of weeks, I maintained a healthy alertness around Tico, and my fear of the big macaw decreased with familiarity. Our getting-acquainted period was certainly a roller-coaster ride, though. I could never gauge his moods. Tensions came to a head when I had to take Tico to a vet for the physical exam required for final adoption. The shelter had arranged an appointment with Anne Calloway.

  That first day, Tico saw this wonderful vet as the devil incarnate. He was also furious with me. It had been sheer hell to get him to the clinic; during the short drive he clung to the front bars of his carrier, swinging back and forth with a mad, menacing glare. Was I dumping him as the others had? Just another human Judas? I was as keyed up as Tico when we were shown into an examination room. Would he explode out of the carrier when we got there? As soon as I let him out, he paced the floor with great agitation. Like most of the companion birds we’ve adopted, he’d had his flight feathers clipped. It was heartrending to watch his panic.

  “Love macaws!” Anne said. She talked softly to Tico. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” In a trice, she had the big guy in her arms, wrapped firmly like a blue and gold burrito. “Let me be the bad guy,” she said, suggesting that I stay behind while she took him to another room to clip his nails. The screams started as soon as they left, and escalated to an astonishing volume. I ran down the hall and saw them through the treatmentroom glass. Tico, wrapped in a towel, was screeching murder most foul. Anne hadn’t even begun treatment. I went back to wait.

  When Anne came back with him, Tico was still wrapped in a towel but wringing wet. She had sprayed him with water to cool him down. And despite the drama, the vet was calm and smiling. “I love spirited birds,” she said. “You have quite a honey here.”

  As she unwrapped Tico, he leaped into my arms, clung to my chest like an infant, and tucked his head under my chin. He was mine after all. And his behavior was ringing some primal bell. Wasn’t his emotional intelligence that of a two- or three-year-old? And hadn’t I seen some terrifying displays of toddler separation anxiety? It wasn’t personal; it was blind, undiluted terror. I held Tico close and felt him relax.

  After that, I was confident that our relationship was solid and that we would pass the home inspection for final adoption. We got no dispensation because our home was a bird sanctuary; rules are rules. When the day came, my gentleman bird ignored the strawberry the inspector had brought him and took a savage bite out of my thumb: I hoped she hadn’t seen, and I stanched the bleeding as best I could, hand behind my back. A short while later, the inspector said, “Congratulations. You have a parrot.”

  Later, when Tico showed himself to be ungovernable around certain visitors, I became hypervigilant for more seemingly unprovoked attacks. I think I understood the message: Don’t even think of giving me away to this person. You’re mine, so behave.

  This was a critical attitude adjustment for me. I surely didn’t “own” the maverick Tico, but parrots do have very proprietary attitudes toward a favored human. It was far more complicated than the simple, loving relationships I’d had with so many dogs and cats. The ups and downs with Tico continued to be baffling and frustrating; he’d be a snuggle bunny one day, angry and distant the next. I realize now that my understanding was limited by my viewpoint. If Tico wanted to chew on a toy instead of coming out of his cage to be petted, I judged him aloof. If I insisted on making him leave his activity in order to play with me, his open beak seemed aggressive to me.

  The real message was, Stay away, I want to play by myself now. After all, from Tico’s point of view, I belonged to him. When he wanted to play with me, he’d call. And if I didn’t heed his summons at once—maybe I’d been off running an errand—an angry bird would lunge at me through his cage when I finally approached, beak poised for retribution, as if to say, Where have you been? How dare you leave me?

  Recognizing the basic cues of a toddler tantrum, I had strategies to avoid them. One method I used with Tico was just to pretend not to notice how peeved he was. Combined with bribery, it worked pretty consistently. I’d see an agitated parrot glaring at me and whisper praises and apologies. “Oh my, how beautiful you look today. I am so sorry to have left you alone. Here, I brought you a treat.” I’d put on music, start to dance and act silly. Before long, Tico would forget he was furious with me, and we would dance.

  As the months passed, I gathered a few clues about Tico’s past life. He had an odd way of putting himself to sleep at night. I would sit out of sight and listen. There was a period of loud, persistent hacking that sounded like an old woman with smoker’s cough, seriously unwell. Then came her laughter, a pitch-perfect cackle befitting a lady of a certain age, sounding utterly delighted—perhaps by her brilliant bird. It seemed to me that the nightly ritual afforded Tico some
sort of comfort and let him drift off to sleep. I think that he may have been well loved and was traumatized by his owner’s death. In fear and grief, he may have lashed out at any relative or executor and was consequently dumped at the shelter.

  Anyone who has worked in animal rescue or adopted a stray knows the questions that arise when you watch abnormal or aggressive behavior in an abandoned creature: Who did this to you? What can we do to make it stop hurting?

  WHATEVER TICO’S BACKSTORY, I knew that I had a smart and cunning bird who now liked me well enough. I got cocky and thought I’d teach him a few tricks. I planned to start with getting him to give a simple high five when I lifted my right palm up near his left shoulder.

  The first session started casually. I played with Tico while he was standing on a perch. If he lifted his left foot, I’d touch my palm to the bottom of his foot, say clearly, “High five!” and reward him with his favorite treat, a sunflower seed. It seemed to go well after a few repeats. Realizing he could earn a treat, Tico responded to my signal every time. Once I was sure that Tico had “captured the behavior,” in training parlance, I ended the session.

  Tico wanted more sunflower seeds and raised his foot. But I was already walking away. He loosed a piercing shriek and kept it up—at an excruciating volume. Even bird-loving Nick moaned, “Mom, the parrot is hurting my ears!” Tom begged me to make him stop. So I did the expedient thing and shoved a whole handful of sunflower seeds to keep Tico busy as I made a getaway. A really big treat is called a jackpot by animal trainers. It is a way to show that you really, really like what the animal has done.

  Over the next few days, Tico reinforced my training—at top volume—and wallowed gleefully in his jackpots. Two or three times a day he raised his foot when he saw me looking at him. If I didn’t bribe him with sunflower seeds, he would scream and drive the family nuts. I worried that they might even pressure me to move Tico’s cage to a less central place in the house, just as we were becoming acquainted. I had captured the behavior my eighteen-inch trainer intended: Foot up? Give Tico a treat. On the double!