“How did you get to be so interested in birds?” my mother asked, after I had dragged her out to go look at a Senegal parrot at a pet shop in Hanover

It’s a good question.

I’m thinking of buying the Senegal. I’ve done a lot of research on parrots over the past few months. The Hub blames Donna for getting me that initial issue of Bird Talk magazine for Christmas. Well, he did at first. By now he’s as excited as I am about possibly adding a “flock member” Or maybe he just became psychologically worn down by me reading out tid-bits from various books and magazines.

Me: “Did you know that when Europeans first encountered ecclectus parrots they thought the male and the female were two different species?”

The Hub: “Is there some reason why I would have known that?”

Et cetera.

Of course, I had my beloved parakeet Ceaser when I was a teenager. I kind of sprung it on my poor, unsuspecting father, though I didn’t mean to. For my entire childhood, I had wanted a cat, and, every so often I would beg for one. I know that if you know me personally, you can hardly imagine me asking for anything, let alone begging for something, but that should tell you how much I wanted a cat. I have been fond of cats all my life. The truth is, I love animals, and the only reasons why I don’t have a cat now are a) I don’t think I’m entirely over the loss of Vio-kitty and b) now we have the pair-a-tweeters and I’m thinking of buying a Senegal.

“What about a bird? Could I have a bird?” I asked, after running the cat thing into the ground for the 4 millionth time.

“Pow!” said my father, pantomiming a shot gun, as if to say “That’s what birds are for: target practice”

Unluckily for Dad we were at the home of his mother, my dear old Gram, who is as much of an animal lover as I am and she is extremely fond of birds. She always had various types of feeders around for as long as she had the strength to keep up with filling them, and even today – she’s in her 90’s – she is highly and sharply observant of wildlife, and can tell the whole story of any birds living in the various houses all around her yard.

I could see the faintest bit of color rise into Dad’s cheeks as Gram turned to look at him, “What kind of bird?” he asked.

“Just a little one. A parakeet. I’ve priced them at Woolworth’s, they’re $12.00 and I could afford the bird and the cage and the seed out of my allowance.” I pressed my advantage.

“We’ll see” But I think the poor man felt so relieved I’d given up on the cat for a minute that he allowed me to get one.

Weirdly, for my 13th birthday, he got me a cat. But that’s another story.

The point is, I didn’t know anything about parakeets when I got one, except that it was possible to teach them to talk if you were persistent. I picked one that seemed vocal and confident at the store – his confident little stride inspired his name. My family thought I was nuts, taking this bird out, setting him on my finger and yelling “Pretty Baby! Pretty Baby! Pretty Baby! Yeah! Pretty Baby! Pretty Baby!….” at the top of my lungs for as long as I could manage it. In those days I didn’t have asthma, and, as a girl my voice was not quite so low, but I still had to raise my voice quite a bit to get the high notes to which the bird seemed most to respond.

But, once he got the idea, he turned out to be quite a talker, and picked up new phrases very quickly. In addition to what I was trying to teach him, he picked up the “yeah!” I would use to break up my repetitions, and “Hi Cease!” from everybody in the family saying that to him as they passed by his cage.

The thing is that he didn’t have another parakeet for company, so he was motivated to learn to talk to me, and I was aware that he might be lonely. In fact, I was highly aware that he was almost certainly lonely, separated, as he was from his own kind and living in an environment to which he was not adapted by nature. Some of what I did, strictly from trying to see everything from the bird’s point of view, turned out to be beneficial, like buying him toys and shred-ables and a bird bath, which he used with great enthusiasm every Saturday. Some of it, like attaching a tiny, crocheted Christmas wreath to front of his cage door every December, so he’d feel included in the festivities, turned out to be a little over the top. Though he did appreciate having the ribbon to chew on.

And, I think, from there I saw a lot of similarities between me and exotic birds. My former mother-in-law, was quite bird enthusiast too. She finches, cockatiels, two sun conures, and an African Grey parrot, to say nothing about her younger daughter’s cockatoo, three dogs, and a passel of fish. She had successfully rehabilitated a number of wild baby birds, always scrupulously taking care that they could survive outside. Though her back yard was a little like a Disney movie, on account of that they tended to hang around and even peek in the window from time to time.

The Grey was so intelligent it was eerie, and it certainly gave me pause that something that bright lived in a cage. But that bird was not exceptional. Many species of parrots can count and use language to communicate, to say nothing about using it to amuse themselves. That Grey, for instance, used to call out the names of the dogs and ask “You wanna go out?” just for the fun of seeing the dog pack run into the kitchen and look around. It was so savvy, that instead of screaming for attention when somebody was on the phone, it would instead imitate the noise of the phone ringing, causing the caller to ask “Do you have to get that other line?” and then the householder would have to explain the whole situation with the bird, while it fluffed its feathers knowing that yet another human was learning about how smart it was!

It’s possible that parrots and I have a similar sense of humor – and they DO have a sense of humor. And knowing that is how I became so interested in them. Because we seem to me, in many ways to be just alike: intelligent creatures living in a world with other intelligent creatures with whom we can just barely, kinda-sorta, communicate and share the same reality. It’s my minority personality type again. I feel very much like someone who should have lived somewhere else. Some place unimaginable to me, yet I would know it if I ever got there. It’s just by accident of birth I wound up here on the East Coast of the U.S. just like an exotic bird is only by chance hatched here at a breeders instead of on the plains of Africa or in the tropical rainforest. Yet, we each do the best we can, keeping our sense of humor, reaching out to get along with those we live among. The unlucky of us earn our keep by our pluck and outré antics which keep everybody amused. The lucky of us will be taken in and appreciated for who and what we are.

So, I know I could make a good home for a Senegal, and maybe make a friend of it, if it were so inclined. The pair-a-tweeters, as charming as they are, have each other and will probably one day have their own family which I will not have the heart to break up unless it becomes absolutely unmanageable for me. Of course, it will have to get to know the dog, but I think animals can sense a gentle nature. The parakeets have almost no fear of him.

So, stay tuned! The bird blogs could become a lot more interesting