The Birds of Pandemonium

by Michele Raffin

  “I love you, I love you!” Amigo declared to Nick constantly. Tom was not so fortunate. He had always been kind and attentive to our son’s new companion, yet whenever Tom walked into the room, Amigo would glare at him and mutter, “Asshole!” Maybe Tom reminded the bird of a mean former owner. We’ll never know. The expletive delighted Nick and his pals, who howled with glee every time the bird let loose with it. Amigo was only encouraged by their response. No matter the distance, even if Tom was way out in the backyard, the little foulmouth would holler, “Asshole!” at top volume. Mercifully our neighbors are a good distance away.

  Amigo had no pet name for me, but I was singled out for more special treatment. He bit me—often, and with such stealth and cunning I had to half admire his success. One possible reason for his disdain: Parrots have long memories. During the debates with Dr. Varner about adoption, Amigo may have noticed my tone of voice, my body language, and my negative “bad cop” vibe. It’s likely he had some prior associations with a loud, “Uh-uh, no way!”

  It didn’t matter that I soon recognized the lowered chest, the sidelong glare. Once it was clear I had learned those danger signals, Amigo changed tactics. He’d go sweet on me, crouching and fluttering his wings, a sign that he wanted to be picked up. I’d melt. He seemed to like traveling around the house on my hand. Amigo couldn’t fly. We had complied with Dr. Varner’s strong advice to clip his wings so that he could not fly off, especially since I would be moving him between indoor and outdoor perches. Flightlessness seemed a reasonable compromise for a warm and loving home, but I did feel bad about it.

  Amigo was acting almost conciliatory. He would execute his flutter routine, I’d extend my hand, and he’d step up like a gentleman. We were finally becoming friends. Once I was lulled into goofy complacency, he started asking to be picked up and then biting—hard—at my extended hand. If I hollered, “Ouch!” he would burst into laughter. “Ha-ha-ha!” The boys, hearing him laugh, always joined in. That only egged him on. I developed a fine network of fading scars. But despite our jousting, I grew fond of our devilish new family member. Maybe it was like learning to love a difficult daughter-in-law: you make allowances when someone loves your son, madly and truly.

  Nick was surely a better young man for their partnership. He was devoted, constant, responsible, and ever vigilant of his tiny buddy. When that moment all parents dread arrived and Nick got his driver’s license, he didn’t head out to pick up his friends. He asked politely to use the car, gathered two towels, and, with Amigo in tow, took off for the park where I used to take Nick when he was small. They went often. One day, I asked to join them.

  Amigo rode in the backseat with one of the towels spread on it. The second towel was laid out to reserve a spot on the park lawn while Nick took Amigo with him on the swings and the slide. The flightless parrot loved those joyrides. Mothers, children, dog walkers, and Frisbee players all seemed to know Amigo and called out to him by name. Should a dog come too near, Nick would scoop up his bird. He explained patiently to children that they couldn’t “pet” his parrot. This tender care was not typical of the teenager I knew at home. That one had become a surly door slammer who was most uncommunicative with his human family. I knew it would pass, as it had with his older brothers. I was grateful for the civility that Amigo still commanded.

  Still, I wondered. Nick would most likely be leaving for college soon. What then? Would Amigo tolerate us? Pine for his best pal? We had some time to think about it. I was sure of one thing, though. Whatever it took, this remarkable little bird would never need rehoming again.

  SEVEN

  Wing and Coffee: Crowned Glories

  Michele, I’ve got an offer you can’t refuse.”

  Aviculturists who breed for profit can’t afford to be too sentimental, so when Louis Brown called to offer me a female Victoria crowned pigeon—almost for free—I assumed that he had no use for her, even though he loves the species. At the time, these oversize blue pigeons from New Guinea were selling for about $1,500, if they were healthy and able to breed. But Louis admitted that this one was damaged merchandise.

  She had a broken wing. He felt it wasn’t economically viable to have it repaired. Handicapped birds are usually a liability to a breeder because they are more difficult to mate. Worse, Victoria crowneds are fairly pricey to keep. They require a lot of space and a specialized diet of fruit, vegetables, seed, and a protein source to replace the fallen fruit and invertebrates that they gather from the forest floors of New Guinea. I would also find out later that they don’t tolerate cold weather well. If they are not given supplemental heat in Northern California winters, there can be expensive vet bills to pay.

  Michele will take her! That was fast becoming the off-loading strategy of the breeding community. Some breeders regularly killed birds that were no longer paying their way. Very few of them liked doing this, but they felt they had no other option. So when word got around that a lady was willing to take unwanted birds as long as you told her a sob story about what would happen if she didn’t take them—and that she was also crazy enough to find and buy mates for lonely adopted birds—well, start punching her number into your phone before that lorikeet breeder beats you to it. Some days these “gift” offers were so numerous and insistent, I couldn’t even listen to my messages.

  Of course I said yes to Louis’s crippled Victoria crowned. I made arrangements to drive up and get the bird the following day. When Louis brought her out, I felt concern rather than excitement. She was beautiful, with her vivid, red-rimmed eyes and rippling crown of white-tipped feathers. The bird had been dropped from a feeding table when she was three weeks old, and the injured wing had never healed properly. As a full-grown adult, she looked as if she was tilting to one side because she dragged the damaged wing on the floor. Maybe that’s why she was named Wing.

  She was a sorry sight, and so withdrawn and affectless I didn’t warm to her. Wing did not care for the company of humans, nor did she enjoy being petted like most of her docile, sociable species. Once I brought her home, I discussed her depressed state with a new vet who had come by for a visit. Anne Calloway was a young doctor who had just joined a dog and cat practice and had a long-standing love of birds. Since veterinary care is often assigned by voucher from shelters and rescue groups, our birds have been cared for by a number of different, excellent practitioners.

  Anne was on her way to becoming a certified avian specialist. Meeting her had been another bit of random luck. Like Dr. Varner, Anne would become a dear friend and gentle healer to many Pandemonium birds. “Wing has the personality of a pheasant—aloof and wary,” I told her. “I suppose she’s afraid of being hurt again.”

  Anne disagreed. “I don’t think her personality has a psychological basis. I think that Wing’s behavior might be due to her being in physical pain. Mind if I take her in and do an X-ray?”

  The results were disturbing. The broken wing looked like swiss cheese inside. “The tissue is a mess,” Anne said. “If you want to prevent further damage, we need to take off all or at least part of the wing.” I felt bad that I hadn’t taken Wing in for an exam sooner. Who knew how long she’d been in pain? I agreed to the surgery on the wing. We decided to do an amputation with the minimum possible tissue removed, but this turned out to be a mistake. Wing had to have a second operation several months later to remove what remained of her wing. Once she had healed and was no longer in pain, she became much more social, just as Anne had predicted.

  Still, the bird needed something more than good medicine, and in my heart I knew exactly what it should be. When Louis called again and offered me Wing’s brother Coffee at a steep discount, I jumped at the chance to get her a close companion. Unlike his sister, Coffee was Mr. Personality around the Browns’ rambling spread. In fact, he was almost a lap bird, too tame to breed and therefore of no use to Louis in expanding his flock. I brought Coffee home and opened his carrier in the living room. When he stepped out into his new life, he had a proprietary air about
him. Soon I found out why: Coffee considered himself a house pet, with full family privileges.

  Calmly the bird inspected the living room as I watched, seated on the floor. As he walked, he wagged his tail from side to side like a happy puppy, and then he stopped and called out with a loud “boom, boooom.” Louis had told me the bird was named Coffee because he liked to sit on Louis’s lap and sip out of his coffee mug. I was puzzled, since I’d just been reading about foods poisonous to birds, and coffee was listed as dangerous to the point of causing cardiac arrest. Louis must have been having a little fun with me; as I’d find out, sometimes his tales were as colorful as his birds. Coffee kept his name, though.

  When he was finished exploring the living room, Coffee walked up and nibbled at my big toe. Realizing that the toe was not edible, he looked up at me and opened and closed his beak several times. I recognized that as bird talk for hunger. I raced to the kitchen for some grapes and put them on the floor. He eyed them, looked at me, and did the beak thing again. Was this big baby used to being hand-fed?

  I picked up a grape and put it on my open palm in front of his beak. He pecked at my hand a few times but didn’t connect with the grape. After each attempt he’d look up and stare, all the while opening and closing his beak. Something about this bird’s gaze, the soft but insistent way he continued to look at me, was captivating. I picked up the grape with my left hand, held his beak open with my right, and shoved in the grape. Coffee swallowed the grape, made a satisfied purring sound, and did his beak flap again: Please, may I have some more? I stayed there feeding him, staring at the amazing white-tipped crown of feathers that vibrated when he swallowed. I was smitten. Unlike his big sister, this guy had me at “boom.”

  Left to his own devices, Coffee would have slept in the house like the dogs and cat and spent his days in the fenced yard outside. But for his own safety—and given the remarkable stench of exotic pigeon poop—Coffee would have to live in an aviary. He did not agree; he hung out at the gate disconsolately, waiting for me to bring him his breakfast and scratch his neck. Once I stopped the scratching, he’d look at me sadly and then try to snuggle under my arm. The depression was understandable for a bird that lives in flocks of up to twenty in the wild. Since, like all new residents, Coffee was still under quarantine until I was sure he was healthy, I had to keep him in an aviary alone for a while. But I had plans. Once again, I cajoled Tom.

  “Do you mind if I build an enclosure that abuts the house?”

  “You’re actually asking?” he answered.

  At least he was smiling. I had the enclosure built near the side door so that Coffee could see us coming and going. I’d left part of his pen unroofed so that he could enjoy direct sunlight. This was terrific when the sun was shining. But one night, during a fierce rainstorm, I ran outside barefoot to check on Coffee. He was sitting in front of the gate, huddled in a soaking heap. He didn’t even look at me when I picked him up, put him inside my raincoat, and brought him inside.

  I dried him off as best I could with a kitchen towel and put him on the floor of the laundry room with a bowl of drinking water and went back to bed. The next morning I found that Coffee had made himself comfortable on top of a pile of formerly clean clothes stacked on the dryer. I walked over and scratched his head. He made that odd purring sound. Finally he was where he belonged, inside the house. A case of sniffles kept him there for a while.

  In a way, the Victoria crowned’s “gregarious nature,” as the scant field literature describes it, has helped seal its fate in the wild. At one time the birds were safe in New Guinea forests too dense to penetrate, but now that palm oil companies are forging roads through the forests, the birds are becoming more and more accessible to hunters. The Victoria crowned pigeons’ heavy bodies make them awkward and slow fliers. Add to that their innate friendliness—they seem to have little fear of humans, even in the wild—and the species is no match for a hunter.

  Though the birds are officially protected in New Guinea, poaching is still a huge problem and there is little or no enforcement of the hunting prohibition. Their splendid feathers are used in headdresses, their skins are sold to tourists, and their meat is consumed. Because they tame easily and quickly, hunters also collect live young Victoria crowneds to keep in pens in much the way Americans keep backyard chickens. They raise them as food, but the birds are not valued as egg producers, since they lay only a single egg at a time and generally no more than three a year. If they are allowed to hatch an egg, both parents incubate it for a month and then nurture the chick for three to five more months. At first the parents feed the babies crop milk, a protein- and fat-rich secretion of the crop, a pouch near the bird’s throat that is part of its digestive system. Both male and female Victoria crowneds produce crop milk. The only other birds able to produce this nourishment besides pigeon species are flamingos.

  This is excellent nutrition for wild babies but problematic should a breeder have to hand-raise a Victoria crowned chick with some alternative nutrient source. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we welcomed our first Victoria crowneds, Coffee and Wing, I was sure I would never be breeding them, even by accident. Because they were siblings, I made sure that they had no nesting box or materials to support breeding. If they did manage to produce an egg, I intended to remove it.

  The moment I was able to reunite Wing and Coffee in the Blue Butterfly Aviary, a bright, airy space big enough for both of them, they stared at each other and broke into a run. They began grooming each other immediately, pulling solicitously at neck feathers in an avian form of embrace. Cue the violins: I sat there sniffling at the sight of such pure joy.

  How Louis would have laughed at the messy sight of me there. I was surely savoring the moment, but the big picture for this breed is not so rosy. Continued reports are still so dire about Victoria crowneds in the wild that it seems their best chance of survival on their native island is on an official Papua New Guinea postage stamp, finely etched, gummed, and perforated. I have some; they’re gorgeous.

  But why settle for such a sad, one-inch-square epitaph if the birds could still boom across the earth . . . somewhere?

  Photographs

  Coffee, Victoria crowned pigeon

  Amadeus, Lady Ross’s turaco

  Amigo, red-headed Amazon parrot

  Shana, yellow-naped Amazon parrot

  Tico, blue and gold macaw

  Crimson wing parrot

  Lady Gouldian finch

  Turaco

  Lancelot, green-naped pheasant pigeon

  Australian crested dove

  Bleeding-heart dove

  Ringneck dove

  Mia Bird, African gray parrot

  Peeki, rainbow lorikeet

  Scarlet-chested grass parakeet

  Mylie, Catalina macaw

  Rosy Bourke parakeets

  Plum-headed parakeet

  Vulturine Guinea fowl

  Nicobar pigeon

  Ferguson, East African crowned crane

  “The Last Aviary”

  Coffee, Victoria crowned pigeon

  Amadeus, Lady Ross’s turaco

  Amigo, red-headed Amazon parrot

  Shana, yellow-naped Amazon parrot

  Tico, blue and gold macaw

  Crimson wing parrot

  Lady Gouldian finch

  Turaco

  Lancelot, green-naped pheasant pigeon

  Australian crested dove

  Bleeding-heart dove

  Ringneck dove

  Mia Bird, African gray parrot

  Peeki, rainbow lorikeet

  Scarlet-chested grass parakeet

  Mylie, Catalina macaw

  Rosy Bourke parakeets

  Plum-headed parakeet

  Vulturine Guinea fowl

  Nicobar pigeon

  Ferguson, East African crowned crane

  “The Last Aviary” at Pandemonium Aviaries

  EIGHT

  Let’s Have Babies

  I’ll be honest, I don’t connec
t instantly with all birds that come into our sanctuary. I was a diligent caregiver to the mated pair of green-naped pheasant pigeons (hereafter shortened as GNPPs) that had arrived unbidden in the mail that day from my “bird friend” Larry, who had split with his partner. Once I saw them in the sunlight, I realized that these somewhat ungainly-looking birds did have a unique sort of beauty. Their backs turn iridescent teal in the sun, and their commitment to each other was impressive. They always moved in tandem, bodies nearly touching; it was rare to find them more than a few feet apart. They were interested only in each other and ran from any human entering their aviary. I hadn’t even been engaged enough to name them until a trip to the vet required names for the registration forms.

  At the clinic’s intake desk, I quickly pronounced the couple Guinevere (Gwen) and Lancelot. Their romantic attachment was something out of Camelot—so much so that I brought them both to the clinic, though only Gwen was ill, with a throat abscess. The pair had never been separated, and I felt the stress of being apart would be harmful to both—especially to the ailing Gwen. It turned out that she needed surgery on her throat, which was performed.