While our every-other-weekend schedule of traveling down to Southern Virginia has become relatively routine for us, one of the things we have always taken for granted is how easily adaptable our parrot has been. For ten years, Sara the blue-fronted Amazon has made that trip with us each time, with few exceptions. Since the beginning of the project, she has been a part of the process, getting used to the house as it has morphed and changed, as the temperatures soared and dropped, and as friends gathered to celebrate our successes, and bemoan our occasional disasters with us.
A photo from 2000, shortly after purchasing our home, Sara comfortably ensconsed in the parlor
In the beginning, Sara was a bit of a nervous traveler. The travel cage we originally created for her was a large cat carrier with a perch screwed to the inside, mounted low, and food dishes set on the floor. The sides were solid, with small vent slots at the top of the carrier, so the visibility was not ideal, and she very much disliked not being able to see out. She soon took care of the problem herself, and after about a dozen trips in this plastic carrier, had chewed through the top enough that she could no longer be contained, squeezing out of the hole she had created, and escaping halfway through one commute to Danville.
This led to the second problem; her ultimate human rival was seated next to her in the car. Though she was a sweet, gregarious and social bird, Sara and Ashley had a sibling rivalry issue; when left alone together they pretty much ignored each other, but if Tom or I came into the room, they were suddenly at each others’ throats. Ashley would tease Sara, eating her favorite foods and not sharing, taunting her from across the room, closing her cage door, and complaining about her. Sara on the other hand was much more simple in her attempts to dominate Ashley. She would climb off her cage and go into foot-biting mode. Put them together in the back of a car, and allow Sara to escape; you can imagine the ensuing chaos.
She was also our number one Hawk Alarm. With every perched or flying hawk that we passed along the way, she uttered a rusty low growl and her feathers became plastered against her, to make her look as skinny as possible. One thing about parrots is that you can tell what kind of a mood they’re in by how skinny or fat they appear. A skinny bird with their feathers tight to their body is a wary or upset bird, not to be touched. On the other hand, a bird with its feathers all puffed and relaxed is approachable, even inviting. Once nervous, if you wait for them to puff up, and shake out all the way down to their tail, they have essentially “shaken off” their anxiety and are more relaxed now. Our traditional morning greeting is a left wing/leg stretch followed by a right wing/leg stretch and a shake. We silly humans usually reciprocated in kind with dramatic arm stretches to imitate her greeting, which seemed to please her.
We soon discovered that though she was a calm and patient traveler during the day, night travel was a different issue altogether. We typically headed home at 2pm on Sundays to be home in Falls Church by dinnertime, and to avoid driving at dusk or in the dark, as our route up 29 North was thick in the center of deer country in many parts. The deer carcasses lining our route convinced us early on to keep to this routine. One trip, however, I had to make on my own schedule. I had to make an emergency trip down to put up new fencing around the pool, as some of the neighborhood kids had pushed down portions of our old wood fence and had gained access to the swimming pool. We now had a legal liability, an “attractive nuisance.” A scary situation if anyone got hurt in our pool. After a long drive down, a hard day of digging post holes and pouring concrete, I had the new fence installed by the next day. Unfortunately, someone took advantage of the missing section of fence overnight and took off with our brand new lawn mower and some other tools we had stored in the back yard. We have learned our lesson, and the new, new, lawnmower is securely chained to the house, in addition to being behind the fence.
It took longer than I had expected to complete the job, and I headed back, along with Sara, well after dark. She did great, singing along to the radio with me and keeping me awake as the job of co-pilot demands She entertained me by hanging upside down in her travel cage, singing and playing with her toys. After about an hour of this, she became sleepy, began yawning and settling down to sleep. With her cage securely strapped into the passenger seat up front, she tucked her head over one shoulder, pulled up a foot and promptly fell asleep. At about this point, the Route 29 bypass ran into the Lynchburg business area, and at the first stoplight I hit she propmtly fell off her perch. Flapping around the small cage in a confused panic, her squawking and complaining filled the car. Finally climbing onto her perch again, she muttered and complained under her breath for a good long time, eventually settling in and dozed off again. This didn’t last long, as the next time I hit the breaks she was off her perch again, flapping frantically around the small cage.
This was completely new to both of us, and I suddenly realized that she was born in captivity, lived indoors all her life, and had never experienced a perch that moved beneath her while she was sleeping on it. She had never learned how to lock her foot onto a branch and sleep through the windy night.
Fearing for her safety, with all that wing flapping in such a small space, I transferred her to my shoulder, where she promptly fell asleep again. At the next red light, she fell into my lap flapping and screaming an alarm. After repeating this exercise one more time, I finally insisted that she sit in my lap, and I spent the rest of the trip holding her gently in my lap with one hand as she slept. She would wake with a start each time I touched the brakes, giving me a firm nip on my finger each time, as punishment for having woken her up. We were sure not to travel after dark with her again.
One memorable trip back from Danville included a stop out in the Virginia countryside to attend the wedding of a co-worker. We didn’t want to disrupt the festivities, yet couldn’t leave Sara in the parking lot in the car, either, so we quietly stowed her away in a back room that the caterers were using so that we could enjoy ourselves at the event without people wondering why we had brought along our bird. Well, at least that was the plan… The caterers were so fascinated with this parrot in the back room that they began to talk, and soon enough a rumor began to circulate, around and around, until another guest excitedly informed us that someone had bought the bride and groom a parrot as a wedding present! We had to quickly inform the couple that the bird was not intended for them, but was rather an uninvited guest. They were so relieved that they officially “invited” Sara, who was then introduced to the lovely couple, as well as my other co-workers, who all took turns getting to know her.
At the DANgaritaVILLE parties Sara is always sure to be present, finding her way from the shoulder of one friend to another’s. Her gregarious and outgoing personality makes her popular with everyone. This format worked especially well until the year that she actually TASTED a margarita. From that point on, we had to retire her from the DANgaritaVILLE parties, because she would spend every moment walking down people’s arms to their drink to get another taste of that frozen deliciousness…and we couldn’t exactly condone drinking, even though she was well into her 20s at that point. Either way, she would share anything that you were eating, and meals were a favorite time for her.
As many of you already know, this is where it gets hard…I actually started writing this over two years ago, but didn’t get a chance to complete it before Sara got sick. We knew she had been slowing down, even though she was only 26 years old, which is young for a Blue Front Amazon. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong with her, but we finally discovered that she had a large tumor growing in her abdomen. It was one of the hardest decisions we ever had to make, and when we said our final goodbyes to Sara, the emptiness she left behind was excruciating. She was a perfect fit to our family and such a smart and personable creature. We lost an important member of our family that day.
It was a long time that the cage sat empty in the corner of our room. I have rationalized to myself that finding another parrot was a doomed to failure, as I could never have what was lost, but I kept considering, thinking, missing the funny laughter and little parrot noises and rituals. Finally this year, I started looking, and found another amazon to engage in our lives.
Welcome to Austin! Though he is NOTHING like Sara and can never replace her in our hearts, he is his own bird, indeed. A third-hand Double Yellow Head Amazon, he is nine years old and has a sweet and relaxed personality. He is a little ADHD, however, and gets REALLY excited over car rides (sometimes obnoxiously so), and is still getting used to the flow and patterns of our lives, just as we are getting used to the personality quirks and boundaries that he possesses, as well as enjoying his sense of humor and gentle personality.
In the meantime, please help us to welcome him into our home as we make a place for him in our hearts. We hope that you all can get to know him a little bit better over the coming months and years as we experience life events together.
Carla Minosh
While I am new to Blogging, I have always enjoyed sharing the stories of my crazy life, so this is simply another medium to share, and hopefully entertain and enrich others. Perhaps you can feel thankful that your life is so steady and predictable after reading these, perhaps you can appreciate the insanity and wish you had more of it in your life. Either way, the crazy tales are all true (to the best of my spotty recollection) and simply tell the tale of a life full of exploration, enthusiasm, curiosity and hard work. I hope you all enjoy being a part of the journey.
I know what it is like to live with cats. But a bird? No.
But your sweet and wonderful (and a bit sad) story makes me want a bird now!