Teddi

As I've said, one of my goals is to "know everything about everything" before I die. I have other goals like learning to love more fully also. But in service of the first one, about a year ago, I noticed a small announcement of a "Basic Bird" class at the local Humane Society. The class was actually put on by Mickaboo, a bird rescue organization.

Why not. I had the Saturday morning free. Something else to know something about. I never knew that parrots live 50-70 years and even smaller birds like budgies live long lives. And parrots, conures (What's a conure? That's another thing I learned.), cockatiels, macaws, etc. create real, solid bonds with their owners, much like dogs and cats. I found out that the best bird food is an extruded pellet with all the nutrients needed--not seeds and nuts. Like most people, I assumed that birds eat seeds.

I've been a life-long dog lover. An old memory is getting chewed out by my mother because I fed a pound of hamburger, our planned dinner, to my friend's dog. But the apartments where I live won't allow dogs or cats. In March, I discovered that my neighbor is keeping cockatiels and the manager knows that. Oh, not just my neighbor but several others in the complex have birds, even one macaw. Yes, birds are fine.

Mickaboo is an all volunteer organization which takes in abandoned, wounded, or just surrendered birds. Lots of conures--go ahead, look it up--and cockatiels, Eclectus, African Greys, and budgies. They put the birds up with "foster parents" who nurse them back to health if possible before they are adopted out. They also place a few birds in "bird hospice."

I went to their website and looked at pictures of all their birds. Like many folk, I was attracted to all the pretty colors of the conures and the brightly colored macaws, but conures tend to be very noisy and inappropriate for an apartment and macaws are generally too large. I saw a gorgeous red female eclectus (The eclectus is one of the few parrot species where the male and female have very different coloring. The males are mostly green and females are red and blue. Most parrots cannot be sexed by appearance.)

So I filled in the l-o-o-n-n-g-g application form to adopt a bird and after a certain wait was contacted for an extensive interview by phone. After all, this is not a baby, it's a bird. As a result, I was cleared for a home visit. Home visit? Oh, maybe it is baby. We had the home visit and in person interview. I passed. All humor aside, the Mickaboo folk are very conscientious and want to be sure that an adopter takes her/his responsibility very seriously. Birds are fragile. For example, they can easily be killed by the fumes from teflon cooking utensils. They need a reasonable amount of space for a cage and they need it to be placed well so that they get light when awake, but darkness to sleep.

Unlike finches and canaries, larger birds want companionship--especially the larger parrots. So the home visit included questions about my work habits, even hobbies and vacation plans.

I was approved. Then began the effort to set appointments to visit and meet potential "adoptees". Since all the "foster parents" are volunteers who also have their own lives, a visit has to be scheduled for mutual convenience. There was one conure who seemed promising. But actually hearing him let me know that he just wouldn't fit in. Cockatiels might have been good, but somehow I never quite warmed up to that breed. I met my Eclectus in Oakland, about thirty minutes drive from here. Rose is a great bird and would eventually become a wonderful companion to someone, but a previous home had left her apathetic and unapproachable. I knew that I just didn't have the bird-raising skills to help her recover.

The next bird I met was Kelly, an African Grey Timneh. She is a beautiful bird. When people speak of African Grey parrots, just the word grey suggests drab and uninteresting. But that does not do justice. The subtle shades of gray are amazing and then there is the surprisingly red tail--more maroon in Timnehs. Kelly though had many other socialization problems and the "foster mother" advised me that lacking experience, I would be even less successful with Kelly than she had been. Even after nine weeks, Kelly was still having trust issues and Janet, the "mom" had a lot of time to spend with Kelly.

The next week brought me to San Jose, a two-hour drive, to meet Teddi, a Congo African Grey. Teddi, like most Mickaboo birds, had problems. "Trust issues" are common as many of the birds have been with owners who either ignored them, treating them like goldfish--nice to look at, but not to interact--or actually maltreated them in some way. But Teddi was not so badly damaged as either Rose or Kelly. She would step up on my hand without biting and she would take treats, very carefully, from my fingertips.

I was warned that Teddi had some interesting whistles and mimics. While carrying her out to my car in the parking lot, I heard a truck back-up alarm. Looking around for potential danger, I could see no trucks--nothing that would have had such a sound. No, it was Teddi. Later, a few hours after getting home, I heard my phone ring. Running to pick it up, all I heard was the regular dial-tone. Just as I was about to hang it up, there was the ring again. Again, Teddi. Since then, Teddi has exhibited a wide range of whistles, including a loud wolf-whistle--no, my female readers, I am not so crass as to teach her that. :-) Then one day I heard a whistle I recognized. She was whistling the first bars of the fourth movement of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony. Huh-h-h-? Honest!

African Greys are noted as among the smartest birds, known to speak clearly and even create new sentences from their arsenal of individual words. Teddi doesn't frequently speak--though occasionally I do hear, "Hello Kitty"--but as we get to know each other better, I have confidence that she may eventually learn to do psychotherapy. She will probably be as good as many of the therapists I've known.

We are getting more and more comfortable with each other. She will now take treats from the palm of my hand, not just the fingertips. She will even let me kiss her beak. In fact she even asks for kisses. If I am VERY gentle in my movements, I can touch her body with my cheek. She still freaks out if I try to touch her with my hand. There must be some really bad association with hands. I have more than a few wounds from her defensive bites.

My lack of bird inexperience shows up occasionally--frequently. Last Saturday evening, I heard a strange squawking and ran to see what was up. I thought she was choking from something stuck in her throat. Putting her in her "travel cage" we ran to the emergency vet who looked carefully, probed with a forceps, found absolutely nothing--and didn't even charge.

Still, I'm glad I checked it out. Teddi and I have a long way to go, but we are definitely falling in love. Every morning, I take the cover off her cage and as she wakes up, I realize just how glad I am that she is with me. When she looks deeply in my eyes, my heart does melt.