The Birds of Pandemonium

by Michele Raffin

  The two were clearly more than passing acquaintances. Their behavior suggested they were a bonded pair that the seller had split up, either ignorant of the trauma for the birds or insensitive to it. In the wild, lorikeets live and travel in bonded pairs. The woman had walked the length of the hall with the rescued bird when the caged lorikeet managed to escape. It flew to Peeki’s carrier and landed on top of it. The two birds began a frenzied vocalizing back and forth. The seller did not have any trouble retrieving the escaped bird because it remained clinging to Peeki’s carrier instead of flying away at his approach.

  “How much is this other lorikeet?” the rescuer asked. She felt terrible about separating the pair. “Already sold, but these guys aren’t.” The vendor pointed to a cage full of doves with dirty tail feathers. When trying to buy the second lorikeet proved fruitless, she left with Peeki and brought him to me. When I heard her story about the sad separation, I was determined to restore his health, then find him a companion. I never imagined that he’d end up with a mail-order bride from the East Coast who spoke like a cast member from Jersey Shore.

  Once Peeki was recovered and on a proper diet of fruits and nectar, I put out feelers for a female Lorikeet. A New York rescue operation offered me Harli, who was said to be lively, talkative, and friendly. No one quite understood why she had been returned quickly by a string of adopters. I paid for her airfare, and Harli was shipped to California. When she arrived, I brought the travel crate into the house. I opened the carrier door, but it was faulty and fell off. Harli flew out of the crate, directly at Tom. She landed on his shoulder and promptly stuck her long, nectar-probing tongue in his ear.

  “Michele, please get her off me!” he said, trying not to yell. “I’ve been violated by a bird!”

  As I reached for her, Harli yawped in a Jersey girl accent, “Whatcha doin’, honey?”

  Tom and I were helpless with laughter.

  Since Harli was not acclimated to the outdoors and she needed to be in quarantine before I introduced her to Peeki, I kept her in my office for a while. I enjoyed her company. Our best times were in the early morning, when I do paperwork. Harli would con me into taking her out of her cage, wriggle out of my hands, settle on my head, and inspect my hair for bugs. I assured her that my head was parasite-free, but she decided it was her job to ensure it remained that way. She also liked to kindly pluck a hair or two while she was searching for imaginary arthropods. By the time her quarantine period was over, I had a small, perfectly shaped oval of bare scalp on the top of my head. Harli could sense when I was about to stop working. I’d be putting the finishing touches on an e-mail, and she’d gather up the hairs that she had harvested, fly over to the chair where our cat, Minx, was curled up asleep, and drop the bundle on Minx’s head. Minx would wake up, startled and confused. By the time she noticed the ready-made hair ball, Harli would be across the room, looking utterly innocent.

  Harli’s exuberance was undiminished when I moved her to an empty outside aviary. “Free food! Free food!” she’d yell happily as I approached to fill her nectar bowl each morning. And to anyone she didn’t care for, she bellowed, “Jerk!” But soon another side to this cheery bird emerged. The first time I tried to catch her to have her examined by a vet, I used a towel rather than a net to get ahold of her. She dug her claws into my hand. I had deep puncture wounds that didn’t heal for weeks.

  Then she started to attack me. Lorikeets have very sharp beaks and nails and can inflict serious damage. Tame lorikeets like Harli can be especially dangerous, since they are not afraid of humans. When Harli flew in your direction, it was impossible to tell whether her intention was to land on your head to groom you or to bite you on the face. I called the rescue group that placed her with me, and they confirmed what I suspected.

  Harli had been the adored pet of someone who was unable to cope with behavioral changes when the lorikeet reached puberty. Like humans, animals go through hormonal changes when they reach reproductive age. Most human parents might confess to having inhumane thoughts when their fifteen-year-old morphs into a surly young alien in constant attack mode. (“Eeeew, Mom—are you really going to wear that?”) We endure because we know it will pass. In the case of a tame bird, a sudden “attitude” or aggression from a formerly docile creature can be very upsetting to the owner. Unfortunately this sometimes leads to an animal’s being given away, even though it is acting naturally. It may begin a self-perpetuating cycle of rejection and aggression.

  It’s no fun being attacked by a bird, even a little one like Harli. The only way I could get her aviary cleaned was to double-team her. One person did the cleaning while the second stood guard with a net or hose to chase the little dive-bomber away. I took to wearing swim goggles to protect my eyes, and Harli didn’t figure out that it was me for some time. Eventually, though, she looked closely at my face and uttered a relieved, “Whatcha doin’, honey?”

  I didn’t think about how odd I must have looked until a new neighbor showed up at the door with a small thank-you gift for a welcoming dinner I had hosted for her family. She thrust a small package at me and said in a cool, dismissive tone, “Give this to the lady of the house. It’s very breakable, so be careful.” I took the gift and answered politely, as one’s household help should, “Certainly, ma’am.”

  Harli, watching from her aviary, sent the gift giver off with a high-decibel farewell: “Jerk!”

  Finally, Harli’s quarantine was over and it was time to acquaint her with Peeki. Bird introductions can be tricky. Some birds don’t like each other when they first meet, but they grow into the relationship. Others never bond. It’s always best to take things slowly. I put Harli’s cage next to Peeki’s. Both birds stayed as close to each other as they could manage through the wire mesh. I had planned to keep them this way for several days, but after the first day I knew there was no need. I moved their cages into a ten-by-eight-foot aviary and opened both doors at once. The birds flew out of their cages and landed on the same perch, side by side. Harli started preening Peeki, and when she was finished, Peeki did the same for her.

  For several years they were a tight, devoted couple; they took baths together, danced or hopped around together, and swung on ropes in tandem. Before Harli’s arrival, Peeki had been shy and sedate and never spoke. He was afraid of people and flew to the farthest corner when someone approached him. Once Harli joined him, he became playful. If Harli began her favorite game of swinging upside down from hanging rope pulls, Peeki would be alongside on another rope, keeping pace. He was a strong and agile flier. I suspected from his behavior that he was wild caught and might have spent his carefree Aussie youth in a grove of eucalyptus trees. This made me even more determined to give him the very best quality of life I could; Harli, his ditzy mail-order bride, was one terrific therapist.

  We made a convivial trio. Both birds liked to hang upside down on the wire when I approached their aviary. I petted their toenails and talked to them.

  “Hi, Harli. Hi, Peeki.”

  “Harli, Harli, Harli!” Harli would holler back. Peeki stayed right by her side but never said a word. I had put them in the aviary I had built for Coffee and Wing, and since the crowned pigeons were now living in the Blue Butterfly Aviary, I named this one the Lorikeet Lair. It was attached to the house, with a window that opened in. Harli, who had been a family pet, could now have a sense of participating again in human family life. Yet there was space for Peeki to retreat when he wished. He was still his most exuberant self when the two birds were alone. I must have left their feeding door ajar one day, and when I walked into the kitchen sometime later, I found the two lorikeets dancing conga-style around the perimeter of the kitchen table. Harli broke stride just for a second to address the interloper. “Whatcha doin’, honey?”

  Three was indeed a crowd, so I left them to it.

  SPEAKING BIRD—THAT IS, communicating with our Pandemonium flock—had become a great joy, and I was becoming better at it. But I also longed to talk birds with breeders, vets,
academics, and other avian obsessives, people who wouldn’t roll their eyes when I extemporized over molting patterns and nest box hygiene. I had passed up a number of professional conferences because it was hard to leave the birds. It was a lot of work for a “sitter” to take on, and I worried. Still do.

  There was a conference coming up that included a special panel on lorikeet nutrition. The pollen that they would take directly from flowers in the wild is not reproducible, so instead we feed a powder, which the birds themselves mix with water to produce a nectar. It can be a tricky business.

  I made arrangements for interim help with the birds, took a deep breath, and packed for the three-day conference. On my way out, I stopped to say good-bye to the lorikeets. Harli was hanging upside down on her favorite rope swing next to Peeki. “See you when I come back,” I sang out. Harli answered, “See ya later, honey!” as she vigorously pumped the swing.

  The aviculture conference was better than I’d imagined. I learned a lot, loved the company of like-minded bird keepers, and was thrilled to be able to exchange information for hours at a time. I arrived home feeling energized. The rest of the family was off visiting relatives, so I went to check on the birds and say hello to the dogs and cat. As I walked down the stone path to my front door, there was a chorus of “Hello,” “Hi,” and “How are you?” from the parrots and a cacophony of honks and whistles from the Australian parakeets. But the Lorikeet Lair was silent. Harli always greeted me by yelling out an energetic, “Harli! Harli!” whenever she heard my footsteps on the front path. Their aviary looked empty.

  “Harli? Peeki?” I called. From inside the nest box that the couple shared, I heard a muffled, “Harli! Harli!” I felt a mixture of relief and excitement. Since it was not their regular bedtime, there could be only one explanation for the lorikeets’ being inside the box. After all this time, Harli and Peeki were going to have babies. They’d been at Pandemonium for seven years and had never laid eggs. I’d wondered whether perhaps they were older birds and no longer fertile when they came to us, but there was no way of knowing. Then I saw the note on the counter from Angelica, the very capable woman who had cared for them in my absence.

  It said that Harli had died the previous day. But hadn’t Harli just spoken to me from her box? I was devastated and mystified. I called Angelica. All she could tell me was that she had found a dead lorikeet on the floor of the aviary and had taken the body to the vet for a necropsy, since this is our standard procedure. She was fairly sure that Harli was the one who had died, but since she had hastily wrapped the body in a plastic bag, she couldn’t be totally sure.

  I didn’t dare disturb whichever bird remained in the nest box if it was indeed sitting on eggs. Harli and Peeki were different species of lorikeet, and their markings made it easy to tell them apart. If the surviving bird didn’t come out of the box, the mystery as to which had died would be solved when we got the necropsy report. The one thing that the necropsy always determines with total accuracy is the bird’s sex.

  The surviving bird stayed in the box and didn’t come out until after dark to eat. I figured that it had to be Harli, since she was the only one of the two who talked, and the bird in the box answered, “Harli! Harli!” when I called out. The voice lacked Harli’s vitality, but that was to be expected, since she’d just been widowed.

  The necropsy report arrived on the day that the surviving lorikeet finally left the nest box in daylight. There was no egg, and it was Peeki who emerged. I was certain of that, since Harli was a Swainson’s green-naped subspecies and had a chest that was a brighter orange than Peeki’s. I opened the report; it listed the probable cause of death as botulism, possibly from spoiled food. This finding meant that the bird’s death was probably avoidable. We are very careful with all feedings for individual species. In hot weather, the lorikeets’ nectar can go bad, so we always take it away after four hours. The person who had been responsible for feeding the lorikeets was experienced and reliable. It was hard for me to believe that she had not put out fresh nectar. Besides, both birds had been given the same food, and only one died. Yet something had gone wrong. I had to accept that human error was most likely the cause of Harli’s demise.

  There was another shock in the report. The dead lorikeet was a male. This didn’t make sense, since Peeki, our male, was still alive. I was perplexed. Harli must have been a female, since the pair had been so loving, so devoted to each other. Then I realized that I’d overlooked the most logical explanation for two male birds’ having a close and loving relationship. The lorikeets could have been a contented same-sex couple. “Gay” behavior in birds wasn’t unprecedented.

  Two recently famous pairs of bonded male penguins in Madrid and Toronto zoos drew vastly different reactions from zoologists. Gentoo penguins named Inca and Rayas built nests together every spring at a Madrid zoo, ever hopeful despite the fact that their nests remained empty. Finally the zoo arranged for a fertilized gentoo egg from a zoo in China to be given to the pair to incubate. In Toronto, Buddy and Pedro were ultimately separated and put into enclosures with females, causing a public outcry. The zoo’s reasoning: as a couple, the male penguins made an insufficient contribution to the gene pool.

  Scientists studying Laysan albatross on the northwest coast of Oahu reported female couples that engaged in all the behavior that heterosexual albatross couples do—except copulating. In the same article detailing the albatross study, the New York Times reported that some sort of sexual behavior in same-sex animal couples has been observed in over 450 species. I wouldn’t know or care what Harli and Peeki did in the privacy of their nesting box; I do know that given both of their long, difficult journeys, life was beautiful once they shared the same perch.

  After Peeki left his mourning place in the nest box, he was a changed bird, but not in ways I would have expected. Instead of retreating, he became more like Harli had been. He spoke now—in Harli’s Jersey accent. I wanted to find him another partner, but I was confused. I explained my dilemma to Tom. “Which do I get? A female or a male?” If Peeki was gay, I wanted to provide him with a suitable new partner. I could find a male lorikeet, but how would I find a gay one?

  And what if Peeki was straight and had adapted to being housed with a male? This was also “normal” behavior in the bird kingdom. In this case, maybe I should find a female lorikeet. Or maybe Peeki was bisexual.

  Tom’s suggestion was to leave it to fate. I should send word out that I was looking for a lorikeet and see what was available. It took about four months. Then I heard that a presumed-to-be-female rainbow lorikeet had been turned in to the local bird rescue.

  When the new adoptee arrived, Peeki named her: “Harli!”

  I amended it to Harli II. When I’d introduced her, Peeki had not given her the same immediate reception he’d given the original Harli; in fact, he completely ignored Harli II for a couple of months. Finally I noticed the two playing together in the birdbath. Their relationship lacked the spirit and vitality of the first pairing, but they got on reasonably well. I didn’t know for sure whether Harli II was male or female, but I felt that this lorikeet was not the perfect one for Peeki and decided to keep my feelers out for another.

  A year passed, and it was time for the aviculture conference again. As much as I longed to go, the memory of what I had come home to a year earlier made me think I should skip it. Tom urged me to go again; he had heard so much excitement in my voice when I had called home from the first one. I’d had the chance to visit with bird curators from zoos, query birdfood manufacturers about changes in formulation, and meet field researchers involved in saving birds in the wild. I shouldn’t make decisions out of fear. After all, Harli might have died even if I hadn’t been away.

  I went and had a wonderful, enriching two days, but anxiety sent me home a day early. The first greeting I heard was, “Harli! Harli!” The call was much louder and more insistent than usual. I dropped my bag and ran to see what was wrong. When I’d left, Peeki and Harli II had looked fine. Th
ey had been spending more time than usual in their nest box, but I assumed that was because it was still winter and they were escaping the cold. It was almost dark out, and I could barely see. I reached inside our front door and turned on the lights to the Lorikeet Lair.

  “Harli! Harli! Harli!”

  Peeki was screaming louder than I’d ever heard him. I peered into the aviary, expecting the worst.

  There were four lorikeets inside. My first thought was that someone had left two lorikeets without asking me if I would take them. This happened sometimes. But a closer look revealed that two of the birds were juveniles. One looked exactly like Peeki and the other like Harli II. Lorikeets incubate their eggs for thirty days, and then it takes another thirty days for the babies to fledge. There must have been babies in the nest before I’d left for the conference, but I’d had no idea.

  I still miss being greeted by the first Harli every time I walk the path to my front door. But it’s plenty lively in the Lorikeet Lair. Peeki now talks a lot. His vocabulary includes most of the words that our first Harli used, but he has added some phrases of his own, including “Good food!” and “Hi, there!” The family has grown in number and vocal power. Mom, Dad, and three rambunctious kids all scream out, “Harli! Harli! Harli!” every morning. I’m sure that the original Harli would find it a hoot and outscream them all.

  TEN

  Tico: The Bird Lady Gets Schooled

  Five years after our first visit to the Browns’, a colorful village of aviaries had arisen, taking up most of the back and side yards. They were painted in soothing tropical blues, greens, and yellows, trimmed with cupolas, trellising, and mosaics by local artists, and hung with sculptures and fountains. The donkeys added a bit of barnyard flavor, joined by a couple of darling Nigerian dwarf goats that I’d given Tom for his birthday. We seemed to be at full multispecies capacity, so when I confessed that I had been longing for a bird of my own, Tom’s face took on the slack, rubbery look best described by that odd, expressive word: flabbergasted.