You’d think I might gracefully accept defeat. But I respected Tico’s intelligence enough to put it to another test. Above all, I wanted to keep him stimulated. At a bird show, I had seen birds that could identify shapes and colors, a skill they demonstrated by fitting puzzle pieces into matching holes. I ordered a plastic puzzle meant for birds and bought a couple of inexpensive children’s wooden puzzles on eBay. The plastic one arrived first. I put Tico and the package on a table. He was very interested in the paper and tape and had great fun ripping up the cardboard box. He refused to go near the puzzle.
After many tries, I got Tico to pick up a puzzle piece and drop it. He treated it as though it were carrion, touching as little of it as possible, then quickly dropping it. Once he was given a food reward, he would race to the far end of the table, climb on the back of a chair, and break out a few dance moves that seemed to declare, This foolishness is beneath me. Wooden puzzles irritated him more; he would pick up a piece, then fling it as far as he could.
Even though neither of us enjoyed these sessions, I kept it up and got no rewards for my stubbornness. When my sister Lynn called, she asked how the lessons were going. “Not well,” I confessed. “I may have to stop soon because I keep losing pieces.” The acrylic ones had been the first to go; only three of the initial seven pieces were left. I had switched to just the wooden puzzles, but those pieces had gone missing as well. I told Lynn, “It’s just as well. He doesn’t seem to be smart enough to figure out that after you pick up a piece, you’re supposed to drop it in the corresponding slot.”
She tried to be consoling. “Wow, I guess birds are like humans. Some are smarter than others.” A few days later, I was at the computer in my office, and Tico was on a stand beside me. I left for a moment, and Tico didn’t notice my return. I watched him from the doorway. He had left the perch and was walking toward my bookcase. He climbed up, using his beak and feet to pull himself to the next shelf, and when he reached the third shelf, where I kept the puzzles, he picked up a yellow square from the plastic set, climbed down, walked to the trash basket, and dropped the piece in.
Game, set, and match—Tico!
It was challenging enough to go mano a mano with this guy, but when he enlisted some other companion birds in his pranks, I was nearly undone. It was summertime, when the parrots live in outdoor aviaries. Tico’s gang of three consisted of himself, Amigo, and a foster Indian ringneck named Kiwi. Their aviaries were beside one another. I went out to visit with them and found Tico in Amigo’s aviary and Amigo in Tico’s. I thought I’d put the parrots in the wrong place. A few days later, I found Tico, Kiwi, and Amigo all in the same aviary instead of their separate ones. I suspected that one of my children was playing a trick on me. Next I found Tico in Kiwi’s aviary, Amigo in his own roost, and Kiwi outside, standing atop her aviary. A red-tailed hawk circled overhead. It could have easily snatched the tempting ringneck.
The human reconsidered. Tico did not like Kiwi. Tico had the motive, he had the opportunity, and he had the skill at opening cage doors. What I hadn’t realized until that moment was that he could also close doors behind him and look utterly innocent. I quickly returned the birds to their own cages, and that afternoon I bought a combination padlock to put on Tico’s door.
At first he seemed intrigued. He likes all kinds of hardware as long as it’s real. He disdains parrot toys. Since keeping parrots physically and intellectually engaged is essential to their well-being, a huge market has developed for intriguing bird toys. I had noticed one advertised on the Web that consisted of a steel wheel with complex nuts and bolts in it. It was expensive, but I decided it would be perfect for Tico and I ordered one. He refused to touch it. The next morning I found the toy on the ground. Tico had managed to unscrew the stainless steel bolts I’d used to hang it from a beam in the roof.
The cage padlock did thwart Tico. But I had problems with it, too. The numbers on it were small, my fingers were often cold and clumsy on chilly mornings, and I sometimes forgot the combination. After a few days, I took to leaving the lock on, but unlocked; I doubted that Tico could tell the difference. This gave me a false sense of security, and I assumed all was well.
I should have known better. By then our sons were teenagers and liable to be just as crafty as Tico, sneaking out of the house after curfew with the same daredevil stealth. Once, they threw a party while Tom and I were away, and they did such a good job cleaning up afterward that we had no idea what they’d been up to—until I found the recycling bin full of empty beer bottles. He began sneaking out for some fun in the garden, creeping back home, and shutting the door with the unlocked padlock swinging from the handle just as I’d left it. Tico’s smoking gun: a mess of broken branches and chewed-up, mangled leaves surrounding his aviary. Busted!
I managed to keep him contained after that, but I was out of my league with this guy and ordered a parrot-training manual. The instructions seemed rudimentary. You ignored behaviors that were undesirable and rewarded those that you liked. The book suggested that you identify which behaviors you wanted to extinguish and which you wanted to reinforce. I followed the suggestion that I write down my goals, along with a plan. It went like this:
Goal:
1. Extinguish Tico’s “Come here” when he wants to bite someone.
2. Teach Tico to say “Come here” when he wants me to transport him.
Plan:
Ignore him when he screams; go to him only when he is quiet or talking softly. When I pick him up, say gently,“Come here.”
It looked good on paper. Tico, alas, would not be ignored. He just screamed louder. When this failed to bring me to him, he developed an alternate training plan, drawn from his own crafty manual. Instead of screaming, he would mess further with me by using animal calls. Doubtless he had noticed me responding to distress calls from our other animals. Tico is a fabulous mimic.
He tried a coyote howl first. A coyote visit is not a welcome event at any time, but to hear one howl in daytime is alarming, since only a sick or starving coyote would venture close to the house before dark. When I heard the coyote near Tico’s outdoor cage one afternoon, I grabbed a broom and rushed outside to shoo it away. Tico watched the slapstick, celebrated with a few quick Travolta/Latin hustle turns, and then stretched out his right foot—his cue for wanting to be picked up. I doomed myself by laughing. I couldn’t help it. And dutifully, I brought my bad boy inside the house. Again, Tico had captured the behavior he wanted from me. I was well on my way to being trained to come to Tico on command.
The coyote howls went on; I ignored them. Then I heard the “mehhhh” of our little goats coming from the wrong part of the yard. There went my flowerbeds, if the goats had escaped their pen. Again I charged outside. Tico. Next, there were donkeys braying far away from their corral. Out I went; score another for the bird. Dogs were clamoring to come in. But wait—the dogs were all inside. Gotcha, smart guy. I stayed put, and Tico doubled down.
Distress calls were his next ploy. I heard what sounded like Minx, our cat, in a feline brawl and rushed outside. There was only Tico, doing his victory dance and stretching out that right foot. I didn’t pick him up, but I couldn’t hold back the grin. Then, during another phone call with my sister Lynn, I heard our old dog Shannon whining outdoors. In her final years, Shannon was blind and regularly got lost in our backyard. Her voice had become hoarse, and instead of barking, she whined with a distinctive distress call when she needed to be rescued.
“Got to run. Shannon needs help,” I told my sister. “Call you later.”
“Michele!” Lynn yelled into the phone before I could hang up. “Shannon is dead! You’re probably hearing Tico.”
She was right. The bird had driven me out where the buses don’t run. I was hearing dead dogs.
“Chalk up another for the parrot,” crowed my sister.
I can admit it now: I enjoy matching wits with Tico even if I am always the one wearing egg on my face. I’m sure this is because the big, scary macaw ha
d indeed become my darling—the best of dancers during our morning boogaloo sessions, and an absolute love when the mood struck him. He would nestle close, with his head under my chin. I spoke to him only in soft, quiet tones—something I’ve learned works best for all our birds, thanks to observing its effects on Tico. We danced most mornings. I let him lead, of course.
And then I was jilted. For a vain if beautiful airhead named Mylie. Like many of our other parrots, she was adopted from Mickaboo, a companion-bird rescue group in the Bay Area. I had met one of the volunteers in Anne’s waiting room during Tico’s first visit there, and I was impressed by the group’s knowledge and dedication. Mylie is a rescued Catalina macaw, a hybrid produced only in captivity by breeding a blue and gold macaw, like Tico, with the magnificent scarlet macaw. She has a bright yellow chest, a blue-green head, and an elegant, tapered tail.
At that point, most of our parrots were in a large outdoor aviary together. Once I introduced Mylie to the flock, Tico fell hard for the comely and colorful newcomer, who didn’t vocalize much more than “kiss, kiss.” Soon they were a bonded pair, their connection tight and exclusive.
No more snuggling with Tico for me. Very little dancing. More biting? You bet. Probably had to do with hormones, and it’s also about monogamous love. The two are insistent that they not be separated even for their morning transfer to the outdoor aviaries. We now use wooden perches rather than our tempting hands to transport them, and they like to share a perch for their trip outside in the morning, and then back inside in the evening. They spend their days together preening and communing in parrotspeak. I do wish Tico had chosen a mate of his own intelligence. But Mylie is the beauty queen that knocked him witless, and it’s okay. Their mutual devotion has resulted in a quality of life that’s a main objective in rescue. I dearly miss “my” bird. But the past is irrelevant if their future is assured.
ELEVEN
Hello, Pretty Mama
I’d say that by now I might qualify as an avian psychotherapist—if our birds didn’t continue to surprise and confound me with their range and expressions of feeling. Birds are deep. Human understanding of their emotional needs is inadequate at best.
It is a pretty widespread assumption that animals do mourn, and intensely. Some wrenching evidence went viral in August of 2011. Millions of people worldwide were moved by the photo of Hawkeye, a Labrador retriever who refused to budge from beneath the flag-draped coffin of his Navy SEAL handler Jon Tumilson, killed when his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. It’s almost impossible not to choke up at the image of the bereaved black dog stretched limply on a chill marble floor.
No one has to convince me that some animals feel profoundly, given what I’ve seen. There is plenty of scientific literature and anecdotal evidence to show that animals in the wild mourn their own, often with something humans might classify as ritual. A much-viewed National Geographic video shows elephants encircling and “respecting” their dead; crow and magpie “funerals” have been examined in scholarly journals and in the amazing book Gifts of the Crow, by John Marzluff and Tony Angell. They also write a fascinating blog for Psychology Today called Avian Einsteins, which explores bird intelligence and emotions.
I wish that providing a balm for avian grief could always be as simple as finding the bird a new mate. That’s often a viable solution with our aviary birds. But there is nothing as straightforward for helping companion birds whose emotional turmoil is tied to their previous relationships with humans. Where do you begin to try to ease the screaming night terrors of a sweet parrot whose doting owners simply gave her away after twenty-two years? What does a one-legged Lady Ross’s turaco who has hidden in a cardboard box much of his life require—and does his connection to autistic boys come out of his own traumatic past? The origins of a rescued companion bird’s behavioral tics are almost always a mystery, since most of these birds come to us from shelters or rescue organizations with scant or no histories and plenty of issues. When the adoption is direct—that is, when I’m contacted by people who cannot or will not keep their birds—I may have a bit more to go on. But the reserves of guilt and deception about off-loading an animal often cloud the truth. Lying or withholding information only hurts the chances of a good readjustment.
If compassion is the essence of a rescue organization, summoning forgiveness for human transgressions is the much tougher job requirement. It still appalls me when people just walk away with little thought or preparation for the animal’s future life. The need for accountability is best expressed in a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous children’s fable, The Little Prince. The title character in the book befriends a wild fox. “Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
When Amadeus, the Lady Ross’s turaco, arrived at Pandemonium, it was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. For four years, until it proved too problematic, I took birds in a foster care program when their owners were too ill or financially unstable to care for them; if and when the situation improved, the birds went back home. I did not charge for their care.
The woman who brought Amadeus left six other exotic birds with us; I had helped her find homes for seven more. Her house was “underwater” financially and she was forced into a short sale and a move to temporary housing that did not allow animals of any kind. She hoped to reclaim her birds when she got back on her feet. I agreed to take the ones that were hardest to place. Amadeus fit that category because he was handicapped and, as a result, emotionally crippled—at least according to his owner.
Turacos are fruit-eating birds from sub-Saharan Africa. They are arboreal, flitting swiftly through the tree canopy. At Pandemonium, where we now have three species of turacos, we provide them bird-safe, sturdy manzanita branches and feed them papayas, apples, and blueberries, along with vitamin and mineral pellets.
Amadeus is a striking bird with a missing leg. His head feathers are bright crimson and stick straight up, and his beak is bright yellow, somewhat reminiscent of a duck’s, but slimmer. His body is covered in sleek, shiny black feathers everywhere except on the head and under the wings, where patches glow red when he flies. His color comes from real pigment, which is unique to turacos. In most bird species, feather color is a result of the refraction of light on the feather shaft rather than of intrinsic, chemically based pigmentation, as in turacos.
When I asked how Amadeus had lost his leg, the owner’s explanation was cursory and puzzling. She had come home from work one day and found the turaco with a broken leg. She had no idea how it had happened. A vet put a cast on it, but when the cast was removed, the entire leg “fell off.” It seemed strange. When I asked about his personality, I was told, “He’s very shy, very quiet. Never vocalizes. Make sure he always has a cardboard box so that he can hide in it. As long as he has a hiding place, he’ll be fine.”
She assured me that I could put all seven birds that I was fostering for her in the same aviary, since she had done so. I wasn’t convinced this was a good idea, because the other birds were all grain eaters and were a lot more nimble than one-legged Amadeus. After a day of watching Amadeus hang back while the other birds got first dibs at feeding time, I decided that my suspicions were correct; he got a chance to eat only after the other birds were finished and the fruit meant for him had long disappeared. I had just separated the aviary that abuts the house into two components. One was for the lorikeets and had Plexiglas panels around it; the other was empty and perfect for Amadeus. I could keep close tabs on this supposedly shy bird right through the dining room window. I also made him special perches for his handicap and gave him a hideaway box for that alleged shyness. He never used it.
Once Amadeus was in an aviary alone, he became one of the most social and vocal birds I’d ever met. And loud. Since he could see the front walk, he became our welcome bird. Before a visitor even had a chance to ring the doorbell, Amadeus would belt out a joyous greeting: “Who, whoooo! Who, whoooo.” We al
l fell hard for our disabled turaco. Then his owner returned to claim him. Her life had stabilized and she intended to get her birds back. Amadeus was at the top of her list.
She arrived to retrieve him with a woman she described as her “bird nanny,” a seemingly lovely and gracious person who had cared for the owner’s birds when she traveled. The woman was quite knowledgeable; she spoke kindly to all the birds in the cages that line our dining room. They responded to her calmly, as though they had known her for a while.
I was dreading the loss of a bird I’d grown so fond of. I opened the dining room window that abutted his aviary to feed him a last blueberry. He gobbled it down. I then opened the window wide enough to let him come inside so that he could be reunited with his owner. He hopped over to her but refused to take the blueberry she offered. By then she and I were both sitting on the floor with the bird between us. Amadeus hopped over to me and began sucking on my toe. She called him and offered the blueberry, but he stayed glued to my side, standing on his one foot and leaning his body against my foot. She was annoyed.
“I’ll just have to towel him,” she snapped.
It was inconceivable to me that anyone would have to force this genial bird to come to them, since it was always easy for me just to pick him up. Suddenly the bird nanny turned to Amadeus’s owner and addressed her firmly: “If you try to take Amadeus away from here, I will throw myself in front of your car to prevent you from doing it.” She turned to me and said, “Amadeus lost his leg because my friend here allowed a hornbill to live in the same aviary. Hornbills are predators. They eat birds like Amadeus. It’s lucky he’s still alive. I can tell he’s happy. He knows he is safe here, and here is where he needs to be.”
The Birds of Pandemonium Page 12