The Reason Why I Have Feather-kids

A warning: this post is dark. You're gonna see swear words. You're gonna be reading about a difficult time in my life. It is still difficult. If this is the first post you're reading, please know that not all of my posts will read like this one. I've been through the wringer recently.

I've had multiple people give me unsolicited comments and advice regarding their opinion of my owning birds. The main comments I've received are somewhere along the lines of, "You're dumb/irresponsible for getting birds, don't you know they make terrible pets?" or "What were you thinking? Your birds are going to rip your eyes out. I've heard of it happening."

I did not expect to be in this situation. There have been approximately five people in my life who are fully supportive of my decision to bring these two eternal feathered two-year-olds into my life.

I guess what I'm saying is please be nice to each other, be supportive to those that you care about, and think about what you say before knowing the whole story. I'm still learning that lesson, too.

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When I called my mom back after seeing her missed call on my cell, I was sitting in the driver's seat of my car, about to go to work. I thought she was going to tell me that my Uncle Horst had passed away; he had been hospitalized for heart problems just several days before.

"Grandpa died in his sleep last night."

I could hear that panic in her voice. I could hear the ringing in my ears. I screamed at her, WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING TO ME? She repeated what she had just told me and then I collapsed onto my steering wheel, sobbing.

Four hours later I was on a flight from San Diego to Baltimore. A child two rows in front of me was pretending that her stuffed toy parrot was flying through the air, and I was struck with a thought:

Shit. What are we going to do with the birds?

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My grandparents were the neighborhood bird people. It started when my mother and uncle were teenagers and they got finches as gifts. Then it was cockatiels. Then a Maximilian pionus, a blue-headed pionus, and a white-capped pionus. Then came the rescues. Anytime someone mentioned that they knew someone who knew someone whose cousin's best friend's neighbor had a cockatiel or finch or parrot that was too noisy, too messy, too whatever... my grandparents would be there within the week picking it up and hauling it back to their house. I grew up in a menagerie. I've been tuning out loud, screaming birds since I was born. Severe macaws, cockatiels, lovebirds, monk parakeets, budgies, African greys, cockatoos.... lots and lots and lots of birds.

The birds were Grandma's pride and joy. Grandma lost her eyesight due to macular degeneration, and her driver's license was taken when she was only 54 years old. She spent the next 20 years in her house, only leaving when someone else drove her to her destination. She had Mel Gibson movies and the birds. In 2007, Grandma's health began to decline. She wanted to leave her house less and less. She began getting confused about things, mixing up our names. She started calling all of her kids and grandkids "schatzi" or "schatzele;" it means little treasure in German... she couldn't remember our names any more. She began hallucinating. The birds began to show signs of neglect. They began picking their feathers out. They were put in smaller and smaller cages, to make cleaning them easier. Grandma moved into an assisted living facility for people with dementia.

Grandpa loved the birds, but it just wasn't feasible to take care of them and give them the attention they needed. He gave some of them away.

When I arrived at his empty house on March 14th, there were six birds. Two cockatiels, a sun conure, a blue-crowned conure, a Goffin's cockatoo, and an African grey. I'm not going to go into details, but I immediately found new homes for the cockatiels, the blue-crowned conure, and the African grey.

The Goffin's cockatoo (Timmy, now Loki) and sun conure (Mango... will always be Mango) were coming with me to California. There was never really a question of "if" in my mind, it was just a matter of "when" and "how." They've been in the family for at least 15 years. I've known them since I was a teenager. I couldn't give them away. I always told Grandma and Grandpa that I would take care of those two birds.

Loki comes out onto my arm for the first time in about 10 years.

Mango is a messy eater.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, dozens of e-mails and phone calls, and hundreds of dollars later, I have a plan.

Loki and Mango are being shipped to California on May 31st via Delta Cargo Pet Shipping. I still have to reinforce their carriers with steel mesh and ship those to my mother in Maryland, reserve the flight space for them, and buy some more supplies for them, but the plan is in place.

We're gonna make this work.