Mozart Chronicles: Memoir of Two Moluccans, Pt. 1

A Memoir of two Moluccans
"Eat!!!" I screamed and Mozart's beak popped open involuntarily in a fear reflex to my boisterous demand. In the blink of an eye, I shoved the piece of medicine-laden macaroni in his beak. With his tongue he 'fingered' this piece of pasta and the taste and smell of cheese proved irresistible, as I knew it would be. He swallowed it. I looked at the spoon I was holding. It had four remaining pieces of macaroni on it and I knew three of them had medicine in them as well. I picked one up and held it in front of my beloved Moluccan's face. "EAT!" I screamed again at the top of my lungs.

It was July 10, 1997 and Mozart had refused eating several days before following the death of his mate, Fluffy. She had died in my arms, starved to death, unable to pass food through her digestive tract. Her final radiographs showed two pieces of undigested macaroni stuck in her stomach, rotting. Her proventriculus had been enlarged grotesquely and wasn't functioning. It had been only three weeks since she had first appeared ill. And now her mate, Mozart, refused to eat. He had watched her die and looked at me with a deeply grave look on his 70-something year old face. But I knew that one thing Mozart could never resist was macaroni and cheese. And so there I was force feeding a wild caught geriatric cockatoo I was determined would not suffer the same fate as his mate.

My regular vet had been on vacation most of this time. I remembered the young vet at the emergency clinic when we first took Fluffy in and his glib reaction after reviewing her xrays, "It's PDD. She's going to die. There's nothing you can do. You need to separate her from her mate." He showed me the xrays and I could easily see something was wrong. I was used to seeing lots of xrays (they're properly called radiographs) at my job at a prominent medical publisher. He briefly explained that she would be unable to digest food and would eventually starve to death. I didn't believe him. It didn't matter if he was wrong or right, no one was going to tell me that this bird I had gone to such lengths to rescue was now going to perish, this bird who had waited 13 years to find happiness and was now finally happy, would perish. But she did.

In those three weeks, I dragged her to no less than five different vets, every vet in the mid-Atlantic known to treat birds at the time seeking for one, just one, who would even treat her aggressively like I wanted. And I did not separate her from Mozart. I could think of nothing more cruel to do to a living being than separate her from her greatest joy in life. And besides, he was already showing some of the same symptoms.

to be continued tomorrow...

Pictured: Mozart (left) and Fluffy (right) pose sweetly for a family portrait during the happiest period of their lives. Two wild caught cockatoos, so many tens of thousands of miles from home, who have finally found each other and a reason to live. You can see how Mozart has trouble perching due to arthritis and old age.