Abstract
On the weekend of August 26th 2005 we received our rrst warnings of Hurricane Katrina but all of the forecasts predicted that she would hit to our east and we probably wouldn't receive the brunt of the storm. That Saturday was just like any other day in south Louisiana - we went to work, cared for our parrots and babies then started to prepare for some wind and rain that Katrina would give us over the next couple of days.
In the 1970's and '80's we had owned a number of pet parrots and always had a dream of having an aviary where we could breed and raise parrots domestically so that the public could acquire parrots that weren't taken from the jungles from which they were born. This was our dream and soon became our family passion. Then, in the early '80's, our family was hit with a curveball. My father's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Anyone who has ever been confronted with this disease knows that it's a family tragedy. It became a 24 hour a day and 7 day a week job. This disease makes you put everything in your life on the back-burner. We were able to keep a few of our parrots but our dream of our aviary was gone. After 15 years of this disease my grandmother passed away at 93 years of age. After a few months of not knowing what to do with ourselves, our dream again came to the surface. By this time, importation of parrots had stopped and we purchased our rrst pair of breeding parrots. Being a middle class family,
our Chances were limited and we would have to start slowly. Years went by and our expenses far exceeded our proQs, but the love of parrots made
it all worthwhile. This has always been my advice to anyone - don't get involved with breeding any animal if you intend to make a pro Q, because it just doesn't happen. Your love and enjoyment of parrots will be the only thing that keeps you happy.
We made many friends in the avian community, but in 1999 we met the most wonderful lady and we would soon learn that she would change our lives and make our dreams come true. Pauline Bezette was one of the nicest people I had ever met in an on line community. She had recently moved to Alaska and has learned that breeding parrots in Alaska is one of the hardest things to accomplish. She told
me one evening that she was going to send me a couple of parrots, and that within a couple of years she would give me almost 40 pairs of parrots. She sent us everything from cockatoos to conures and included all the cages and breeding equipment that anyone could wish for. We truly believe that this was our blessing from God and we did everything to make these parrots our beloved family members. The work was intensive, but the joy of caring for these lovely creatures was our passion.
Then, in January of 2000, our family was again hit with illness. My other grandmother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis years earlier and her husband was diagnosed with dementia right after the holidays. We thought it best for my grandmother to live with
my mother and for my mother's stepsister to take her father in her home to care for him. Again, we were faced with another life altering illness in our family, but we stuck to our dream of breeding our parrots. Caring for an M.S. patient is very hard, and you must have
all necessary equipment to make it possible to do everyday things such as using the restroom, bathing and getting from one chair to another. It's was a hard way of life, but we did it with the support of our entire family.
On Sunday morning, August 28, 2005, we awoke to Katrina, which had grown into one of the most intense hurricanes that this country had ever seen. It was now a category 5 hurricane that had its eye set for the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Since we lived in St. Bernard parish in southern Louisiana, hurricanes were nothing new to us, but a storm this strong wasn't seen very often. We decided
to try to evacuate, but we had no luck getting accommodations in any hotel for hundreds of miles. Traveling with my grandmother was a very hard thing to do, as she was unable to sit up for any amount of time, so leaving with no place to go was out of the question.