He turned from watching Ferguson’s long-legged clowning and asked me, “What’s your vision, Michele? And what are your fears?”
Wow. I didn’t have ready answers for him. Ben suggested I take some time to write down my dreams for Pandemonium and list the anxieties and obstacles that might stand in their way. That evening, once all the birds were settled for the night, I sat down in my office and thought about our conversation. Pandemonium had been changing, but it had happened so slowly and organically that I’d hardly noticed. I realized that we had most of what it took to be a nonprofit organization—a mission, goals, an established facility, breeding programs. I was also up to speed on the required record keeping, since we already kept track of bird health and statistics as well as expenses.
One thing was starkly apparent. The operating expenses had become a large financial burden that our family budget could no longer support. Outside funding was a must if we were to keep going in the best way possible for the birds. We were already a nonprofit organization in every respect except for official designation. I had simply been too busy with the day-to-day operations to look very far ahead. It took a perfect stranger like Ben to nudge me toward the next logical phase.
He was right about step one. Before I moved ahead with any plan to formalize our nonprofit status, I had to face my fears—no easy task. I had a long list of them: the financial toll my passion had taken, the worries of feeling inadequate to the growing tasks, the frustrations of a family that was getting less and less of my attention. I knew that I needed to plot a course that would better serve my multispecies family. Still, I was so thoroughly and gloriously immersed that I was afraid for any of it to change.
I was fiercely possessive about those daily joys, afraid of “success” and the loss of intimacy it might bring. As it was, I knew every bird, and every feather on that bird. I would have to surrender ownership of so much of what I considered “mine.” Any founder of a nonprofit will tell you it’s hard to let go. You must bring in a board that can guide you—and overrule you. You must learn to ask for money—skillfully and often. You need to take on staff—even if it’s all volunteer, as ours is—to handle the greater administrative and public awareness tasks that a functional nonprofit demands.
Finally, though, I took the plunge. Pandemonium Aviaries would become a legally designated not-for-profit. That meant shifting our grassroots start-up to an exacting business model that met government standards for operations and accounting. It seemed daunting, but I reminded myself that my graduate degree in business and my work experience counted for plenty. Hadn’t I guided Silicon Valley start-ups? Having been active on a humane-society board, wasn’t I prepared for the ethical and economic debates, the crafting of mission statements and fund-raising goals?
We applied for status as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit and got the designation in April 2010, retroactive to November 2009. By then we were ready. The facility itself had already undergone upgrades for no other reason than to better care for the birds. Following that awful epidemic with the rodent-borne virus and then the mycobacterium, we stopped all transferring of birds between aviaries. We made sure that the companion birds never came into contact with the wild species. We excavated and removed all the substrate in areas where birds had become sick. A crew in hazmat gear—suits, helmets, respirators—blow-torched aviary floors and installed basins of disinfectant and rubber flip-flops for use by anyone entering an aviary. We continued our practice of testing for parasites and diseases carefully and often. At this point I assumed our birds were healthier than any wild birds in the area.
Though it wasn’t requisite, I also decided to subject our facility to tough professional scrutiny so that it would qualify for the Model Aviculture Program (MAP). That voluntary program certifies aviculturists’ operations through inspections by veterinarians in order to improve avian health and husbandry. The MAP guidelines also encourage accurate record keeping on exotic birds to improve the productivity and offspring of breeding pairs. We did it all, from wiring to water delivery, heat lamps, and disinfectant procedures. Pandemonium passed with flying colors.
What I could not keep at bay with netting and disinfectant were those messy affairs of the heart. From the start, I had always declared our sanctuary “birdcentric.” In other words, when we have to choose between the needs of humans and birds, the birds win. There was a corollary that would probably be challenged when I gave up sole control of decision making. I had begun with the premise that all our rescue birds were equal—from Sweetie, the two-dollar quail, to the rare GNPP Gwen. Both had needed expensive surgery. Both got it.
What was fair? Wise? Justifiable? I still had a stubborn habit of expending time, money, and energy on those I probably could not save—a vulnerability that would have to change if we were to move forward as a viable sanctuary. It was time to start thinking in terms of the “greatest good.” By 2009, Pandemonium was sanctuary to more than 250 birds, most of them rescued and thriving. Our population was still growing, but the number of hours in a day had stayed the same. Nonprofit status would allow us to recruit and train volunteers to absorb some of the workload. But would I trust them?
At a time when my internal debate over such matters was getting pretty loud and feisty, along came tiny Ella.
The aviary that housed Oscar and the rest of our Lady Gouldian finches was a very busy place—and I’d held off going in until a new brother-and-sister pair had fledged. Finally I had to go in to clean. When I moved the green-gray baby finch, it showed a normal fear response, trying to avoid my hands. His yellow-hued sister didn’t react at all. I waved my hands and fingers at her. No reaction. She was blind.
A wonderful vet named Rose Franklin had replaced Anne Calloway, who had moved north to the Seattle area. Rose agreed to come have a look at our blind baby. A friend suggested I name her Ella Finchgerald, as Ella Fitzgerald was also sight impaired. Rose pronounced the finch normal except for her vision, and though she wasn’t optimistic, she suggested we try antibiotic eye drops and weigh the bird daily to make sure she was eating and gaining weight. I was willing. Of course I was.
I covered the aviary floor with a crazy quilt of different surface materials—carpet squares, bamboo flooring squares, children’s rubber alphabet play mats—interspersed so that Ella could feel her way around. As I worked, I always knew where she was because of the racket. Ella had so many needs that she cheeped ceaselessly. To get her to drink, I gently dunked her head in a small water dish—one of four, each placed in a corner. I set up a bed made of a plastic food dish lined with soft paper so that in the evening, when the other finches flew up to their perches, I could place her safely in bed. I didn’t want her to sleep on the floor.
Soon her brother had begun eating on his own; Ella’s parents were still feeding her, and I was still leading her to water. I scattered seed on the ground along the way so that Ella would walk on it and find it. I put soaked seed on her beak. Around the sanctuary, a few eyebrows were raised at the time spent fussing over a tiny finch that was most likely doomed; I was in there for hours but felt I had to be. I was aghast when I saw an older finch peck Ella on the head—possibly fed up with her racket. But Ella cheeped on. One day, I watched her brother spend an inordinate amount of time feeding at a millet spray. He then walked up to Ella and fed her. Later in the day, he begged food from his parents and flew down to feed his sister again. What a guy!
The day came when the adults stopped feeding Ella. Her brother persisted, but he wasn’t very adept at connecting with Ella’s open beak. I did what I could. Finally Ella realized that food and water could be found in dishes, and she bumbled toward them. I also noticed that she would spend much of her day cheeping at the aviary gate. Then I realized: when Ella heard the creak of the gate, she knew it was me—the one who gave her water, scattered the seed, brought her up from the cold into the cozy night nest. She was calling me; how could I walk on by?
By then, Pandemonium supporters were following my e-mail updates on El
la and rooting for the little finch. A month after Ella and her brother had hatched, I found myself typing a final dispatch: “I’m very sorry to tell you that Ella died sometime last night.” I had found her on the floor. It was the first time she had climbed out of her bed at night. The weather had been hot that day and she may have needed to find water. We’ll never know.
I took some flak for trying so hard to keep a profoundly handicapped bird alive, and maybe some of it was deserved. I thought a lot about readjusting the ratio of emotion and intellect. Since that time, my actions have changed—not because of the increase in the number of birds, but because of the nonprofit status. I have to answer to others for my actions now, and to consult more people. I’m comfortable making decisions that are best for the organization, even if they aren’t optimal for me. Would I have sold some birds born and raised here in order to purchase the breeding Nicobars pigeons we needed? No. But for the species and the organization, it was the right thing to do.
I had to stop the foster care program, and soon after, I ceased accepting rescue birds. There’s nothing as costly as a free bird. I’ve certainly found that true, even though a bird—unwanted by someone else—can turn out to be the key to your future. And though I didn’t know it, the catalyst to a huge change in our operation was pecking desultorily in a back aviary—a shy, somewhat aloof giveaway that had been with us for years.
FOURTEEN
Blessed Events
I was cleaning the Victoria crowned pigeons’ aviary. Again. That chore can be time consuming because they always want to socialize. They bob their tails like puppies in greeting, brush up against my legs, and step in their food bowls as I’m trying to work. Their clumsy attentions are flattering and frustrating in equal measure. Coffee is still the most effusive greeter, often in the company of his new mate, Tia. They had settled in together nicely—I had been able to find Coffee’s sister, Wing, a mate named Mike—but I didn’t realize how close they had become. Once Coffee had finished his welcoming ritual, I noticed that there was an egg in the nest box. It was clear that Coffee and Tia had scant interest in their egg, because they were no longer sitting in the nest.
A few years before, I would not have been so distressed by the discovery. But since we had adopted and refined a strategic breeding program, a “wasted” egg—leaving an unattended egg for too long impairs or destroys its viability—was another reminder that time was running out for these birds. By 2010 we had begun practicing conservation breeding in earnest with five imperiled species: the GNPPs, bleeding-heart doves, Nicobar pigeons, Victoria crowned pigeons, and their very close cousins, blue crowned pigeons. We expanded our programs, invited help from a multidisciplinary team of experts, and put in place an internal structure to support ambitious goals.
Carefully I examined the abandoned egg closely for any cracks or signs of decay. Like the GNPPs and other birds from island habitats, Victoria crowned pigeons do not lay large clutches of eggs. In the slower pattern of island reproduction, they lay just one egg at a time, which they incubate for one month. If the egg hatches, the baby will not leave the nest for at least a month, and the parents continue to feed that baby for three or four more months beyond that.
A large number of eggs laid by crowned pigeons in captivity never hatch for a variety of reasons. At Pandemonium, the main problem was that our birds were too tame. Coffee and Tia got off their nest box in order to socialize with me. Sometimes they decided they’d rather stroll around than return to the nest. I held the egg in my hand and starting thinking . . . what if? What did I have to lose by sticking it in the incubator that shared space with the more conventional appliances in our kitchen?
At the time, I was busy training a new set of volunteers. I forgot about the egg until a few days later. After all, I wasn’t expecting anything. I decided to look at the egg inside the incubator. By holding a bright light next to the egg, or candling, I was able to see the forming baby and air cell inside. These were good signs. Three weeks later, I found a telltale pinprick on the outside of the shell. The chick was attempting to break out.
This could be incredible—a baby Victoria crowned pigeon born at Pandemonium! I hardly dared let myself hope. Then right away, I saw a problem. The baby seemed to be pecking an irregular pattern of pinpricks that could fail to open the egg. What to do? As I pondered some sort of intervention, I talked to the egg. The baby inside responded with peeping noises and a good deal of movement. It was my low-tech version of the fetal stress tests that monitor human babies in utero. This little guy was likely in some distress, given the pecking pattern, but I knew that it was best not to take the baby out of the shell.
Hatching is something a bird should do on its own. A baby bird’s emergence from a neatly cracked egg is just one tiny moment in a complex process of developmental sequences. The baby must be able to move and breathe inside the shell, crack the shell open with precision, and then break out and free itself with instinctive movements that trigger more physiological responses it will need to survive outside the shell. Many baby birds die before, during, or even after hatching because some fragile link in the developmental sequence goes awry.
I knew that a huge struggle would soon begin inside the shell. Just before hatching, the baby would move around in a way that sealed the blood vessels on the inside perimeter of the shell. It was a critical period that could take a couple of days. Even in the wild, survival is hardly a given; eggs and baby birds often die as the result of disease, predators, or other bad luck. But when you’re breeding birds, especially rare or endangered birds, uncertainty isn’t good enough if there is anyone who might have useful information to improve the odds of survival. I had been making rounds of phone calls to top breeders across the country for help as the egg incubated. Luckily, despite the secretive nature of breeders, a couple were willing to share information, but there was always a caveat.
“I really can’t say for sure.”
“There’s just no telling.”
“You know the odds on these birds, Michele.”
I did get some disturbing information: even if we managed a successful hatching, it was not unusual to have the babies die within the fourth or twelfth week. No one knew why, and the mystery would most likely persist because of that enduring lack of cooperation between the breeders on the one hand, and the scientists and vets on the other. Communication was almost nonexistent. The breeders possessed most of the hands-on knowledge about raising exotic bird babies, but save for a few exceptions like Louis and Carol, they just weren’t going to pass it on. Call it snobbery, call it stubbornness—it still makes me crazy, when there is so much to be gained by pooling information.
I had to face facts. The rare baby in the egg was pretty much on its own—and so was I. I hovered, I fretted, and I was very anxious when we all had to pile into the car and head to Tom’s cousin’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. When we returned, I ran to the incubator. Nothing yet. I was too nervous to sleep, so I settled into my office nearby for the night. I decided to stay up with some paperwork. That would be a lot better than standing in front of the incubator, straining my eyes for signs of movement within the egg. As I shut off the lights in the kitchen to leave the room, I wondered if the baby needed darkness, as it would have in the nest. Or maybe it needed some circadian cycle of day and night. I just didn’t know. I checked the incubator often that night—and of course, I missed the hatch. But there was our Victoria crowned baby outside the broken shell—naked and plug-ugly. Now what? Without his parents’ feathered warmth and a nest, the chick had only featherless humans.
For both Tom and me, it was love at first sight. The depth of Tom’s reaction amazed me. After all these years and all these birds, for the first time he had fallen hard for a baby bird. He named him Peep because “every time I walk by, he peeps at me.”
I called Carol right away with the news. She was thrilled but cautious. She reminded me to leave the baby alone, and instructed, “You’re not to feed him until you see a little poop.
” Peep complied, and the regimen began. In the weeks ahead, whenever Tom was at home, he was hand-feeding Peep a commercially prepared baby-bird formula or just hanging out with him. The two sometimes just sat peacefully, Peep snuggled on the warm chest, his head tucked under Tom’s chin. Sometimes I’d find them both passed out in front of the TV.
Tom’s medical training kicked in. He charted Peep’s growth curve daily and posted feeding instructions—five pages, single spaced—on the cabinet above Peep’s box. When he was at home, he took over Peep’s care. Unlike baby parrots, whose parents insert their beaks into the baby’s crop to provide nutrition, baby pigeons suck regurgitated food in from their parents. Peep drank from a tiny shot glass—Carol’s preferred vessel.
Hand-feeding is grueling; it takes intense concentration every two hours, day and night. The process is also bonding. You become so attuned to the baby’s needs, so sensitized to the tiniest changes and nuances, that it’s a bit of an interspecies mind meld. Nevertheless, no matter how much we cared, we couldn’t be good or even adequate parents to Peep. A bird parent knows when and how to feed its baby, when to warm it in the nest, and when to step away and insist that the baby start to feed itself. With exotic birds like Peep, it takes trial and error as well as scrupulous record keeping to make the data available for others to study so that we can advance our collective understanding. Every hatchling matters because the survival clock is ticking.
Tom fed Peep for seven weeks. Then we brought in another Victoria crowned, one with a maternal personality, to teach Peep how to find and pick up food and eat it. One day in his second month of life, Peep seemed ill with some sort of respiratory problem. I raced Peep to an avian vet with a national reputation, a sort of celebrity vet, whom I hadn’t used before. Peep was on his feet when I left him there, but the following day I arrived to find him lying in an oxygen chamber, extremely ill. We were right up against that twelve-week danger period I’d been warned about. As I looked at Peep, alone in the oxygen chamber and struggling, I wondered if I ever should have moved him. Maybe the change in environment and different handlers had been too much of a shock. Peep died on January 25—Tom’s birthday.
The Birds of Pandemonium Page 15
