the neighborhood comes to the rescue and i forgive some humans

During a week of camping in Northern California, I unknowingly contracted Lyme disease. On the plane ride home, I felt like a sudden case of flu was upon me, and over the next couple of weeks it flared up into something much worse.
One of my symptoms was depression. For weeks, I lay in bed, and between the muscle relaxants, pain killers, and antibiotics, I found myself obsessing about a comment my neighbor had made to me months ago when he saw my exotic birds: “I’d like to kill birds—as hobby, that is…. Can’t stand ‘em.”
How was I to deal with someone whose basic philosophy (he’s an exterminator) seems to be, “if it moves, kill it”? How was I to deal with finding that the general (and formerly avoidable) evil in the world was now living next door to me?
I am a freak for meaning. It is the only thing that makes suffering bearable. In illness one can find ample lessons. With the onset of Lyme disease and then the loss I was about to experience, I was forced to admit that even I I have limits.
My story begins on a Thursday afternoon on the deckoutside of my condo, where I was just lifting my rare Red Fronted Macaw, Ruby, from her cage. Ruby gingerly stepped onto the stick I held to her chest. Although her flight feathers were clipped, she bolted and soared up into the woods behind my house. She was gone as unpredictably as she’d come to me, just a week or so before....
Ruby and her mate, Rudy, had been given to me by Jean, an animal lover I’d met when retrieving my sixteen-year old son, Julian, from her house. At that time, I’d heard her birds calling from inside and asked to see them because I worked with birds. Jean told me how frustrated she was with their screaming as she eagerly led me into a back room where her two birds had sat for ten years and had not mated in spite of her following all the recommendations. I was captivated by their two-and-a-half-feet-long green bodies, bright red heads, and the orange and blue markings on their wings. But when Rudy sidled up to me at the side of his cage, gave a soft appreciative little whistle, and then whispered to me, “Hi, how are you...?” I was almost giddy with delight.
Breeders say that if you want birds to mate, give them a very large cage and leave them alone. I guess as with humans, desperation breeds affection. The only problem is that birds fall in lust with the objects they first see when they open their eyes, and since these birds were hand fed, that spelled trouble in the nesting box.
For a decade, Ruby and Rudy had tried to woo Jean and her husband, Harry, who, being the strong man he was, was less taken in by their ruses. Dear Jean had been more seduced and consequently more hurt. She had learned fear the hard way at the end their enormous beaks. Once, Rudy, probably frustrated by too much time in that back room and over-zealous to be out, had bitten her hand, and the wound required stitches. Since then, she’d left the beasts to abuse each other.
Sigh. Such is the way of family dynamics.
Macho Woman that I was, I remained unphased by this news. I wanted those darlings, and if I got hurt, well, it wouldn’t have been the first time. Common sense is always the first thing to flee from me in new affairs of the heart.
For the next hour, Jean and Harry watched me work with the birds as the birds worked on me. I began by establishing who’s who in the pecking order. With the constraints of a stick and towel, I taught them to step up onto the stick. Rudy tried to nip me but stopped himself yelling, “Ouch! Bad bird!” in Jean’s voice. I encouraged them to come to me and then to allow me to hold them. Although I haven’t had much luck in love when asserting my dominance with homo sapiens (particularly the males) birds are not too worried about their identities to respond—they KNOW they are flock animals. They learned to step up onto the stick, then nuzzle against my chest in the towel (now this trick is not difficult to teach homo sapiens, but they tend to have trouble with the rest). Holding them close, they were reassured by the sounds of my heartbeat and reassuring words.
Jean asked me if I would consider taking them, even though she could sell them. She said she knew that I would make them happy. She would have visiting rights.
I was sure I could get them to at least stop screaming and biting.
Within a week they were adjusting well in my aviary, new members of the flock that included my Blue Front Amazon, Scarlet Collared Mini-Macaw, and two Goffins Cockatoos. Birds view their caretakers as part of their flock, and the newcomers soon made friends with my son, Julian, and my partner, Gary. I had clipped both birds at Jean’s and it seemed they were very poor fliers indeed. (Now I see that they were just out of shape from not having been out of their cage for a decade).
Well, it’s amazing what a lift the outdoors can give a being. I opened the cage and pushed a stick in front of Ruby. In her timid way, she reluctantly stepped onto it and then suddenly bolted into the woods behind my house.
Now, that’s scary. Parrots have extremely sensitive lungs and cannot easily survive in temperatures below fifty degrees if there is wind.
Domestics didn’t get their flight training as bappies (baby birds). They have an absolutely lousy sense of direction. But you would certainly think that landing on the ground would come naturally. Wrong. (Just think what it would be like to try to walk at age ten if you’d never learned.)
Ruby flew into the woods. I couldn’t see
Her, but I could hear her whistling and calling Jean’s husband’s name (“Harry, Harry!”). I found her perched on the top of a huge oak tree. We whistled back and forth for most of the afternoon. By evening Ruby tried to fly to me but flew right over the house to the edge of the woods on the other side.


I thought that surely she’d come to me, then, because she was facing the house, and even if she landed on the roof she’d come down for food and warmth as evening set in. I put Rudy in a cage and plunked it outside (don’t try this with humans). Rudy thought he knew just how to approach this, calmly calling, “Ruby, birdie, what’s up; how are you?” Apparently now that she was footloose and free, she didn’t have to listen to him. But rather than cheering for her like the feminist I think I am, I just watched with despair as she took off into woods that went down to a swamp and over to the dreaded Route 21. I didn’t sleep well at all that night. Soon I would be nuts.
The next morning, Ruby mimicked my calls and whistles heartily, from somewhere in the woods that ended near another dreaded highway. Route 9 is a busy road that leads into the enormous Quabbin Reservoir. I knew if she crossed that road and I didn’t retrieve her very soon, I’d lose her.
Perhaps you would think there is a difference between a human/bird bond and a human/human bond that would temper my attachment and fear of loss. There is; however, it didn’t allay it: I get along better with birds.
All day I followed her, and by dusk she began screaming to me in desperation. She didn’t know how to hunt, especially for water. Finally I caught up with her in the woods. I was feeling faint. By now, neighbors from four consecutive homes had come out and tried to help. They called to her, craned their necks, offered chaise lounges (to me, not Ruby) and camping equipment (for me or Ruby). They put out food on the ground.
An odd transformation was beginning: My bird had fled the coop but my faith in humanity was returning. It was like a mini national emergency. I called the police and the dog pound. The dog pound lady called me back and suggested I contact a tree climber. Meanwhile, Ruby kept trying to fly to me and overshooting. Now the neighbors were the ones to track her back into the woods toward the Quabbin.
I don’t even recall if I slept that night.
The next day, fever and exhaustion convinced me to get more help. I called Canadian Tree Service. Bernie, the owner, said, “Hang in there.” He was on his way with a bucketloader. He’d have to bring me up in the bucket with him and we’d surely get the job done. Within the hour, he arrived at Ruby’s tree and when we were within ten feet of her, she bolted towards the Quabbin.
Back on Earth, I remained delirious. I was leaning on Gary and became dizzy; I fell on him and he fell onto a woodpile. Worst of all, he got mad about it. Well, I told Gary later, it’s no wonder I‘m an animal person.
Fortunately, Annette, an empathetic neighbor, showed Gary a thing or two, rushing to my rescue with cold drinks and aspirin.
Now, maybe I should have dated Bill instead, whose yard abutted Annette’s. Bill stayed outside a great deal of the weekend, tracking the bird, letting us use his bathroom, and offering food and water for the bird. On second thought, I probably should have just stayed with birds: Bill seemed married to his dear old mother. His mother was a nurse who worked the graveyard shift, but nonetheless she made sandwiches which he offered us. Bill put in many hours calling Ruby’s name, after we left on those two endless days. The neighbors continued to come out of the woodwork.
People offered their driveways, ladders, and yards for our operation, as well as their own bird stories. I cried on one grandmotherly farmwoman’s shoulder when she asked me what else I needed. All of them were caretakers of one sort or another—Annette worked in a home for disabled persons, Bill worked with a woman with Alzheimer’s—and they all pitched in as if it were only natural, which it was. Yet how rare I’d believed such neighborly kindness to be, before Ruby took flight.
Because Ruby was flying so high and was not tame enough to grab or climb down to us, I was losing heart, not to mention energy.
My son Julian, had been through this before, although not so dramatically, when our Cockatoo flew into the woods. He knew I never gave up hope. And so when I said something he’d never heard me say in all his sixteen years— “I give up”—he simply looked at me blankly.
I went home and didn’t sleep much that night, knowing the temperature was going down into the forties. I felt guilty closing the window .
I lied to my son and said Ruby could easily adapt to the cold.
Before I hit the sack, I went on the Internet and opened a message, “Words of hope and healing”. Rabbi Baruch had written that no matter what befalls us, people must never ever give up hope. There is always hope. Just before I fell asleep I had an image of Ruby and Rudy back together by the next day, but it didn’t seem possible.
I lay awake, thinking of Ruby until 4:00 A.M. At 5:30 I headed over to the tall trees across the highway. I spotted her sleeping, all puffed up and with her head tucked into her back for warmth. I lugged Rudy back out and he called to her shrilly, but she answered meekly. It was obvious to me she was not well, although the neighbors insisted she was having a time of it with me. I knew better.
At 11:30 that Sunday morning I went back to the house while Bill and Annette watched for her and kept vigil on Rudy’s cage. I told Julian again that I was giving up. He, however, cancelled going to work and insisted he could get her. I thought he was kidding himself saying grimly to him, “How do you catch a half tamed flighted frightened, confused bird?” He’d never heard me speak like this and wasn’t about to believe me.
He went into the woods with a neighbor and they spotted her about 40 or 50 feet up in an evergreen. I fell asleep at last with a sinking feeling in my heart. About 45 minutes later the phone rang. I was out of it. When my son yelled, “I got her!” I was so discouraged I didn’t know whom he’d gotten. What did he mean? I’d asked; a girlfriend? or what? and why couldn’t it wait? “Her, Ruby, I got her!” he yelled breathlessly into the phone.
I jumped up and ran out to the car where I tried to zip over, fearing if I took too long I could learn she’d gotten away again. I had to sit for almost ten minutes as a virtual parade of motorcycles blocked my driveway.
When I finally crossed, I saw my son marching with a huge grin towards me, but—no bird. Then I realized she was tucked inside his sweatshirt. The neighbors all came out and raved about his bravery and said he’d accomplished the impossible. He’d climbed to the top of that enormous tree and with only his legs wrapped around the trunk, held out a stick with a piece of bagel on it.
She’d leaned gingerly towards the bagel and he grabbed her leg. She didn’t struggle.
I brought her home and she pressed her long body into my torso for warmth, no longer shy. Although I haven’t seen any wild dancing between them, Rudy and Ruby have stayed close by each other, nuzzling and preening and mumbling happily.
One slight observation: When I first put Ruby on the kitchen counter with Rudy so that she could revive herself, she ate and drank so much she was coughing, and Rudy, typical of some humans I’ve known, kept pushing her out of his way so he could get more food. Perhaps that’s the real reason she won’t mate with him.