Abstract
EDITOR'S PROLOGUE: From tbe dim prehistory of tbe human race to this oery bo111; certain people bare had special communion uiitb certain animals. To one degree or another; I believe, u/e b aue all had sucb experiences.
The following column is about the relationship between a man and a parrot. It reflects the pbitosopbical, introspect iue musings and intimate thoughts tbat many of us bare bad but baue not expressed. \Vbatei•eryour personal interest in parrots may be, read on. Your spirit will be expanded and warmed by the relationship between tbe writer and the con ure ··Woody."
Part I
It is time dog, horse and cat lovers stopped monopolizing the books and columns devoted to rhapsodizing about pets. If there is no shortage of hyperbole about birds and the cult of birdwatching, I've yet to see anyone writing about man and parrot. And so I'd like tO say a few words about my bird. While the companionship, laughter and affection parrots bring may come as no surprise to their owners-and are benefits usually ignored, if not denied, by bird environmentalists-I suspect there are thousands of parrot lovers hungry for a few words about the object of their devotion. Call my object Woody.
Actually my parrot is a blue-crowned conure. With his pink feet, white-ringed black eyes, pink upper bill, and a body of rich, apple-green feathers fourteen inches long from turquoise head to ruststreaked tail, he is just the right stroking size for small hands like my wife's and mine. We must have looked at thirty birds before we bought Woodyparrots, lovebirds, cockatiels, mynahs, other conures. Money was a consideration, but there were many we could afford, and untouchable macaws and toucans to dream about. Not until Woody, though, did we sense the kindred spirit we were looking for. Sitting in a cage in a dark corner of the shop, looking self-conscious and vaguely lost, with bare pink spots where late-moulting feathers had yet to grow, he acted uncomfortable, shy and oddly self-possessed. I knew the feeling.
It was his smile that attracted me. I had always liked the way some parrots were srnilers, and here it was, unmistakably, a satisfied smile. I know, there are people who say that birds don't smile, can't smile, and that what looks like a smile is only the accidental upward curve of the line formed where the lower bill meets the scoop of the upper. We parrot lovers know better. You might as well say that people don't smile either: it's only the way the ends of the lips are pulled taut and high whenever something causes the cheek muscles to contract. But I have proof that Woody smiles. I've seen him many times when he wasn't smiling: when he's hungry and I've been forgetful, when we wake him up coming home late at night, when he's hard at work on a piece of wood, when all he wants is for me to leave him alone. And so ! learned that to get him to smile I had to let him be himself.
Then there is the way we named him.
There probably wasn't anything original about deciding to wait a while for a name to suggest itself, as the bird slowly reoriented itself to a new home, began to relax into himself and gradually assert his most peculiar and typical personal habits; from these a name would emerge. Probably a good many children would be better off named this way too, instead of having to live up to their names, or live them down, or in adolescence or maturity get nicknames based only on behaviors acquired in extremis. And after only a few weeks we fastened on a very common parrot behavior, a love of intensely tearing and chewing perfectly sound sticks, dowels, broom handles and molding to piles of yellow shavings, as the sponsor of his name. The name had other important connotations as well, if one were seeking to immortalize him by it. Woody. lt hinted of Woody Allen, whose daffy neuroses might well appear in any denizen of our household; and it reminded of one W. Woodpecker, my favorite philosopher after Sartre. Plus, to be fair about it, the name was unisex. Since establishing the gender of most parrots usually requires an operation, we had felt a little uneasy about addressing Woody as a malemaybe it was his nose, or his constant, barely-restrained biting of solicitous fingers that was responsible. "Woody:· therefore, seemed, at least officially, to be a gesture in the direction of objectivity.