Mozart Chronicles: Splish Splash!

Splish Splash, I was taking a bath...Mozart enjoys a good dunking in lukewarm water. A good thorough soaking helps control the prodigious production of down powder cockatoos are famous for. It also helps reduce the itching they feel when they have too much of a powder buildup which can lead to plucking, self-mutilation and more. Such bathing is not a panacea for these problems but are certainly a step in the right direction.

At the time of this bathing excursion, Mozart was very feeble and also blind. Nevertheless he relished times like these. He was never much a screamer or even a squawker, and was a man of few words, but he gurgled and mumbled during baths and other times of high excitement. He seemed to have three 'voices'; one that sounded like a little boy somewhat similar to the voice of cartoon character, Felix the Cat (many cockatoos also have this same voice); and he had his own birdy voice which sounded raspy, deep throated, and chilling, and lastly, he had the old-man-Moluccan voice which he most liked to joke around with which sounded just like Jimmy Durante.

Wiggling his butt happily in a waterfall, Mozart must have been thinking about his old home in Seram where daily rainstorms provide natural bathing opportunities and high humidity.

After the tub filled, Motz (pronounced "moats"), walked around in the water. It took him great effort at this point in his life to walk around much on his cage due to his arthritis and general infirmity, but in the water, near weightlessness allowed him to move around easily and have a little fun at the same time. I would hook my finger in his beak and pull him from one end of the tub to the other for a quick jaunt as well. I made sure he was completely soaked from head to toe and would even massage his feet under the water to soothe his tired, old bones.

With the hair dryer on COOL setting, I could put it close to his skin without burning him and dry him nearly completely before returning him to his cage. That's how it was with winter time baths so he would not catch a chill or one of his famous sinus infections. He would spend a good hour or so preening happily when this was all done and then we'd both be ready for a long winter's nap.

All contents and photographs © 2007 Patti Henningsen. Use is strictly prohibited.

Mr. Vick, You're No Donovan McNabb!

Like many people, I have watched with horror and dismay as the allegations against Atlanta Falcons' quarterback, Michael Vick, have become a heated topic for discussion.

When my husband sold his Ovation acoustic/electric guitar a year or so ago so that he could buy an official NFL Michael Vick jersey, I was dismayed. Chris plays guitar wonderfully but he really wanted that jersey and then for Christmas 2005 he wanted Michael Vick shoes, which he got. I kept asking him, 'who is this Michael Vick guy again?' I was not a fan of the Falcons although falcons are birds and so it didn't sound too bad.

I was a fan back then and still am of the Philadelphia Eagles specifically because, well, maybe only because, I am a big fan of Donovan McNabb. Now when I was a kid, I used to watch a lot more football than I do today. In the Redskins' heyday, I watched a lot more than I do today, too.

But I got a foster rabbit one day, a little black dwarf with gorgeous black fur with hints of espresso in it, and I noticed he had kind of a bulky build. I thought, 'you look like a little football player' and he said to me, "My name is Donovan." So I thought, 'well maybe we'll call you Donovan McNabb then.' And I asked my husband who McNabb played for and that I thought he must be a good guy because our new foster rabbit had just told me he liked him.

So I told my dad and my husband that I'm a Donovan McNabb fan now, besides, I love eagles. And then my dad called and told me something about McNabb which explained why all of this was happening.

Here's an excerpt from an article from the January 23, 2005 Cincinnatti Inquirer in which D-Mac explains about his close relationship with his dogs:

Asked how he handled losing the three NFC title games, McNabb said: "Well, I'm not the first losing quarterback (in the NFC Championship game). For myself, I gathered my two dogs, and we just sat in a dark room, rolled the film and just sat there and watched it together. My dogs talked to me and told me to keep my head up, and I think I was all right."

And then I knew why I was a fan of this player. He talks to his dogs and not only that, they are his teachers and mentors and he loves them with all his heart. On top of this, McNabb, or D-Mac as they call him, does a lot of work for charity, specifically the Diabetes Foundation.

What a contrast to Michael Vick.

So for those of you, who like my husband, are down and depressed about the lack of caliber in the NFL, just remember, not everyone can be like Donovan McNabb, least of all Michael Vick. And Mr. Vick, are you sure your name isn't Mr. Vile? What kind of human behaves like you do? Oh you're so tough and gee that was a really nice suit you wore to your arraignment today. You're such a superstar, such a gifted athlete. But you are really just like T-Rex. Big and mighty but no soul. You do not have a soul, Mr. Vick, and it goes without saying that you have no heart.

On the last episode of The XFiles, Mulder said that the devil is only one man but true evil is a collaboration of men and that's exactly the kind of company Mr. Vick was keeping at his house. You know, Mr. Vick, it's interesting how karma works. It jumps up and bites you in the butt just like an angry dog who has never been shown any love. You must have never been loved or had anyone ever have a real heart-to-heart conversation with you and that explains why there is huge black hole where your heart should be, sucking up everything that comes near it and destroying it.

Mr. Vick, you're no Donovan McNabb!

Mozart Chronicles: You Fill Up My Senses, Pt. 2

Like a Sleepy Blue Ocean..
This type of reawakening of my natural psychic senses facilitated by Mozart was to continue during the whole time Mozart was with me. As I became more fascinated by him, I also became more fascinated by where he was from; Seram, Indonesia. I would lie awake at night wondering what that jungle was like but he would never talk about it. I decided to give him a soaking bath one evening and put him in the tub and filled it up to his hips with warm water. I pulled him over to the running faucet and gently dunked him. He did not resist. He walked around in the water and went back to the fawcet, every sense in his body was on high alert. Afterward I put him on a stool and used the hair dryer on 'cool ' setting to gently dry him. The whole adventure took nearly two hours. When he was settled back on top of his cage and settled in for a sleep, he sent me an extraordinary vision.

As I closed my eyes, I suddenly saw before me huge leaves of many types. Right away I knew he was showing me Seram, memories of which had been reawakened by his swim in the tub. Then came a butterfly and a strange looking beetle shaped like a helmet. There were scary owls and huge flying bats which looked like foxes, lots of bees and more bats. A little pink slug with many brightly glowing antennae (or eyestalks) seemed very important and wondrous as well and sat at the feet of a great, towering tree of unimaginable size. Then oddly, an airplane which was actually part woman flying along with her arms, really metal wings, spread wide. She seemed angelic. And then it ended. I knew these visions were of his departure from Seram and the things that had most impressed him about his home. This was not the first or the last vision he would send me. I was so happy he had finally showed me visions of his homeland, his beloved Seram and how he was spirited away on the metal wings of an airplane which he perceived as a great, feminine force of nature.

Like a Walk in the Rain...
I spent much time pondering this vision and especially the little pink slug with the many glowing antennae. It seemed there were dozens of antennae on this little gastropod but it was unlikely that such a creature really existed. Many years later I would realize this little pink slug was a symbol of Mozart himself and the multitudinous antennae each represented one year of his life in the rainforest, like candles on a birthday cake. I also noted that slugs are 'molluscans' and Mozart was a 'moluccan.'

I also couldn't help but be reminded by this diminutive pink creature in the vision of the great pink sea snail from the voyages of Dr. Dolittle. Slugs are descendants of snails and really are just snails who have lost their shell, just as birds have lost the shell of their egg. This pale pink character from the famous tales of the most famous animal communicator in history was reputed to be 70,000 years old and to speak the animal language most elusive and sought after by the good doctor. Mozart was telling me much with this symbol; that he was indeed aged, like the ancient pink sea snail, and that his language had yet to be decoded and would require much research and journeying (and also help from the fishes) which has proven true. Slugs, I also learned, are a powerful symbol of spirituality representing the ultimate tendency of movement from dark toward the light. Slugs are also most active after a shower! Their ability to climb trees from the base to the greatest heights represent the hidden spiritual powers of an adept on the Hermetic Path and this is very representative of Mozart's life. The more I learn about this symbol and the others from this vision, along with their literal meanings, the more I am struck with a wistful nostalgia and gratitude for having shared my life with this wizened wizard of Seram for a brief while.

"From the life to the light
From the dark of the night to the dawn
He is so in my heart
He is here he could never be gone
Though the singer is silent
There still is the truth of the song"

On the Wings of a Dream
John Denver

On a Clear Day You Can Smell Forever
That weekend I was putzing around in the bedroom taking care of things while Mozart preened himself in his cage. Suddenly I smelled a very foul odor and stood up straight in alarm. The odor was unmistakable, it was the smell of dead fish. It became overwhelming and as I looked over at Mozart, his eyes seemed to radiate a debilitating sorrow. I walked over to him and put my face up close to his. The smell was now even stronger and more pungent, choking me. The smell was coming from him! Wide-eyed I gawked at him. What on Earth could be wrong with him? His sad look grew even sadder and then he said in a pitiful little voice filled with incredible despair, "Pat Pat!" (a nickname all my birds call me).

Now I was really worried. A fear started to grip me about what might be wrong with my precious bird but just as my thoughts started to swirl through possibilities, the odor completely vanished. The room now was filled with the gentle breezes of springtime wafting through the open window. No trace of the previous stench of dead fish remained.

I was mystified but had no idea what to think about it. I made a mental note to myself to notice if something like this ever happened again (and it would). But the next morning, Monday morning, when I walked in the door at work, my supervisor came running down the hall shouting my name. I stopped and waited while she ran up to me, "Patti! Patti!" she called, "please help me! All the fish in my pond are dying! What should I do?" I knew instantly this was what Mozart had been trying to tell me. I referred this woman to an ichthyologist and spent the rest of the day in a daze as I contemplated this new sense of clairalience, or 'clear smelling.'

Another rusty doorknob had been turned and the doors of perception thrown wide open thanks to my fine feathered friend, my Merlin, my Mozart. What would he teach me next?

"And don't you know the life that lives
Within the silent hills
Is just as rich and beautiful
And just as unfulfilled
As man with all his intellect
His reason and his choice
Oh, who's to say the nightingale
Has any less a voice"

Children of the Universe
John Denver

Mozart Chronicles: You Fill Up My Senses, Pt. 1

Like a Night in a Rainforest

It wasn't long after Mozart came to live with us, and not long after we discovered his extraordinary paranormal powers, that he began to use them to broaden my sensual perceptions. For a while there I even began to wonder if he was indeed some special, powerful, supernatural being, an emissary from the natural world sent to demonstrate to humankind what powers were possessed by one of the most successful and long-lived (surely a measure of success) of nature's designs, tropical parrots.

After all, Mozart was born in perhaps the most dense area of biodiversity on Earth; the jungles of Indonesia. To survive there requires a good deal of intelligence and constant assimilation of information about one's environment.

And for this species of cockatoo, which can live 70 years or more, to reach a ripe old age meant one had accumulated much knowledge and wisdom indeed! And here he was, all these years later, sitting on top of a dog crate in my bedroom. Safe, sound, bored and feeling talkative. After fourteen years in captivity, he hadn't been much impressed by our species. I imagine I was the least impressive of all humans he had met to that point but I did have one redeeming quality in his opinion. I was totally in awe of him and he enjoyed this. Eventually though, I was to inadvertently win his awe and respect. So we entered into a deep relationship based on mutual respect and love. To a cockatoo there is nothing more important than love and I just happened to be a very intense person in this regard. I loved him as much as any human in my life and rushed home to see him every day and spend as much time as possible with him while we were both present together on this Earth.

I was in the habit of leaving him messages on our telephone answering machine which I strategically placed underneath his cage with the volume set on high. "Hi Motzie (pronounced 'moatsie')" I would croon to him during my lunchbreaks, "I love you! When I come home, we're going to watch Elvis Week ok? You're a good boy! You're my babushka!" So he became accustomed to hearing my messages during the day and 'bushka' became one of his many special nicknames.

Like the Mountains in Springtime...

One day while I sat at my desk at work thinking of a special message to leave Motzie that day, something unusual happened. My office was in the building of a company where many of the staff had been laid off and I was isolated from any other occupied office. It was quite some distance from my desk to any other occupied desk. But suddenly I heard a voice out in the hallway which sounded like a mad little boy saying "You got some people calling you!" I got up and ran to look out the hallway but there wasn't anyone to be seen at either end of the long hallway. I returned to my desk. I thought about it and got up and looked out the hallway again. Then the thought popped into my head that maybe what I had heard was Mozart projecting his voice to me all the way from home and telling me that I had a lot of messages on my answering machine!

I called my home phone number and dialed in the security code for the message machine. There were indeed five new messages! All of them had come during one hour which was also when Mozart liked to take his nap. I was stunned. What a powerful being he was! I marvelled for many days over his ability to transmit to me over such a distance. It was one of my first experiences with the power of clairaudience. I believe he used his natural powers to unlock a part of my brain that had been shut down since childhood and thus reawakened my ability to hear clairaudiently so I could hear him from over 75 miles away as if he was shouting from the mountaintops.

to be continued tomorrow...

Mozart Chronicles: Do You See What I See?

This is the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail which caused Mozart to become very upset. We were never able to watch just anything on TV again after he came to live with us. Any violence, even if he could not see or hear the TV show and even if he was upstairs and we were downstairs watching with the volume on low, he would still see whatever we saw as if he were seeing through our eyes, which he was in fact doing.

He would complain loudly at our poor choices of television viewing and make moaning sounds to let us know he was disappointed. We would call up to him, "Motz! It's ok! It's just a movie! It's not real!" He was quiet and happy though when we watched family oriented programming. He also exhibited precognitive powers. Once we were watching Seven Years in Tibet which we'd just bought on video. From upstairs, he was quiet right up until the end of the Christmas party scene. Then he started screaming inconsolably. We looked at each other. The very next scene was the attack on Tibet by the Chinese and the movie became dark and violent from that point on. How did he know this? Had he seen the movie before through our eyes when I had originally seen it in the theatre? I didn't even have him then! Was he tapping my subconscious past? Had he seen it through the eyes of the collective human consciousness? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Whatever and however he was able to foretell such plot turns in movies and TV shows, one thing is clear, his level of awareness was far superior to our own, almost to the point of being a super intelligence. And here he was, a little (about 1.5 pounds) pink cockatoo parrot from the Indonesian rainforest. A denizen of our very own Planet Earth with powers of heightened awareness that could teach us lessons to supercharge our own development as a species and yet, sadly, he is an endangered species and his homeland is being illegally logged at this moment. Plans to drill for oil off his home island's shores will surely spell doom for the one island on this planet where these great beings dwell. As the gospel according to Thomas reads, "The kingdom of Heaven will not come by expectation. The kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the Earth and men do not see it."

Let's hope we can learn from Heaven's pink angels before they disappear forever.

Mozart Chronicles: I Can Hear For Miles

Mozart was very upset when I returned to the job which I had disliked so much. Not only that, but I became even busier, taking classes in design and working with rescue groups. It seemed like we didn't have very much time together but every spare minute that I was in the house, I spent with him.

He began to complain about it. I would leave for work in the morning and tell him, "Bye Motzie, I'll see you later. I love you." And he would sadly whine, "You don't love me." I would always reply, "Yes I do love you."

This went on for years. Finally one day after I'd said, "I love you," only to have him declare loudly, "You don't love me!" I confronted him. "Mozart," I demanded, "why do you always say I don't love you? I love you more than anything else in the world so why do you always say that I don't?"

He leaned down over his cage and put his big head next to mine, zooming one big black eye in on me and said solemnly, "You don't THINK about me!"

I realized that he meant that while I was busy running around doing a million things that I do in a day, working, cleaning, cooking (well sometimes, ok not very much), volunteering, taking classes, that my mind sped along a zillion miles a minute planning out the week ahead. During none of this time did I ever think about Mozart. It wasn't until I got home that I focused on him completely, if then. I looked up at him sadly defensive. "But Mozart," I replied, "I have to go out and make money so you can eat and so I can pay your vet bills, and I have to go to school to keep up with my job, I have to help rescue animals because YOU taught me to and I have so much to take care of, I am so busy and I have to think about a lot of other things a lot. But I love you very much and I'm very sorry you feel neglected."

I knew that Mozart was in tune with me 24 hours a day regardless of how much distance there was between us. I could be at work and he would know exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I would even get uncannilly strong clairaudient messages from him while I was away.

So to make him feel more loved, I took a picture of him (the one at the top of this page) and put it in a little frame and took it to work. I put it on my desk next to my computer monitor and during the day, I would take mental breaks and look at his picture and send him loving thoughts. I even hooked up our home phone message machine next to his cage and would call him during lunchbreaks and leave him messages! He never said, "You don't love me!" again.

All contents and photographs © 2007 Patti Henningsen. Use is strictly prohibited

Mozart Chronicles: Moonbeams & Cockatoo Dreams

Mozart was a very old wild-caught Moluccan cockatoo from Indonesia. He abhorred captivity, it broke his heart he would say many times. He had been imported by a breeder but the breeder soon removed him from the breeder flights. He wouldn't breed. Grey eyes like little moons hid darkly behind black lenses full of the wisdom of the aged. Mozart's eyes, when seen in bright light, up close, shone like silver discs. I asked him once "why do you have grey eyes my friend?" His thoughts leapt out at me, "Because I'm old!" I believed him. He ought to know so who was I to doubt him?

Moluccan cockatoos, as well as other types of cockatoos are the only kind of parrots whose sex can be determined by their eye color, for the most part. Hens have dark, fiery red irises while males have chocolate brown irises. But some Molly men (male Moluccans), and probably some Molly women, have been observed to have light grey eyes lurking behind those black lenses. The cockatoo lens is dark but not opaque and it can be hard to tell the eye color unless one is very close and preferably has the advantage of streaming sunlight to aid in observation.

We would often stand such, eye to eye, him perched high on top of his cage, leaning his head down to just above my eye level. Our eyes only inches apart, I would stare into his eyes, or eye, rather as he would do the famous sideways parrot zoom, and he into mine. I always thought when we did this, he was trying to tell me something and I just was choking and couldn't hear his thoughts. What was he trying to tell me?

Starry, Starry Night
Distracted my eyes would often wander upwards to look at the glow-in-the-dark star-shaped stickers I had placed on the ceiling above his cage. There were stars, comets, asteroids, little planets and a full moon all carefully placed to give the impression of a crystal clear night far from any city and any light pollution. Before turning in for the night, I would shut off the light and the little star show would brightly glow. Mozart's head would roll backwards as he gazed lovingly at his 'night sky.' The moon in particular was his favorite. Marveling at the Earthern satellite, I could feel his memories quaking and rolling through a troubled heart, a wild heart that had been plucked from its home in its golden years and whisked eleven thousand miles away for the purpose of creating a captive population of these rainforest angels. Oh Sorrow thou hast pink wings!

Oh Sorrow thou hast pink wings!
Since I knew that birds admire airplanes, I thought Mozart might enjoy a new documentary coming on TV that year about space travel to the moon. "From the Earth to the Moon" had begun showing ads with a nice big shot of the moon. I pointed to the TV and explained to Mozart, "See that? We humans have made big ships and have sent a couple of men to the moon," I pointed emphatically to his 'moon' on the ceiling.

Mozart had been listening politely, more interested in the picture of the moon on the TV, his eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the video clip of a rocket headed toward the moon which was followed by a man standing on the moon. He looked at me again and then at the moon on his ceiling and suddenly his entire being became animated. His beak opened and his eyes widened as wide as they could, his wings spread slightly. Taking widely spaced, dramatic steps, one at a time, he started walking across the top of his cage toward me. His crest was tightened down close to his head. In his little boy voice, he said out loud very slowly, his voice shaking with incredulity, dawning realization spreading throughout his consciousness like someone who has just found the Holy Grail, "You've...been...to...the..moon?!!!"

"You've been to the moon?!!!"
As I watched him slowly approach me, I too had a realization. He was really impressed, more impressed, in fact, than anything else I could possibly have told him. Apparently, birds, flying creatures who probably cover more distance in their lives than any other type of living being, have probably dreamed about space travel silently along with us through the eons. Suddenly I felt guilty, "No Motz, I haven't been to the moon, these guys went to the moon way back when and I don't even know them. Only about five or so humans have ever been to the moon." But he didn't care, my species had gone to the moon and he was awestruck.

Now standing just in front of and a little bit above me, he paid me the highest honor a Moluccan can bestow on another being. Leaning over, he gently began preening the top of my head. He'd never preened my head before. I knew this meant something special, like he was deferring to my species which he now considered to be worth his time to try and understand a little better. I stood there enjoying it while I could.

The Target of Dark Forces
Later that night, I turned off the light and we settled in for a sleep. His stars glowed brightly and he happily filed his beak, a sound that made me happy. But that night I was worried and distraught. We had been looking for a new home to move to and I was up most of that night worrying, as I did many nights, about whether the harrassment I had suffered at the hands of radical conservatives would follow us to our new home. At that particular point in history (1998), it seemed, people had nothing better to do with their lives than to watch reality TV and try and ruin other people's lives with little or no reason. It was just the sport of the day, pick a target, break every privacy and harrassment law there is and pursue someone who is different from you, who might espouse some ideal or some futuristic thinking that poses a threat to corporate governance. And I was the target. Too bad they didn't pick terrorist subversives instead.

As I fell asleep, I knew my dreams would just be a continuation of the negative thoughts I had been experiencing. I dreamt of moving to a new home and being followed by a posse of corporate zombies who were trying to kill us. But in the dream I was most worried about Mozart, whom I carried everywhere on one arm. I was desperately trying to keep him safe from the anthrax that this posse was spreading everywhere. Suddenly, I went outside onto our new lawn and realized Mozart was no longer on my arm. He was in a tree in the front yard, the only tree in the yard and the tree was oddly sort of rectangular shaped. It was dusk and getting darker by the second. Above this tree was an array of stars glowing in the night sky but the stars were only above the tree and nowhere else.

A Posse of Corporate Zombies Who Were Trying to Kill Us
Mozart called to me and I went over to him. I was still upset by the nightmare I was experiencing, so he said in his sweet little voice, softly and soothingly, "Pat, let's look at the stars together." Then he turned his head and looked at the stars above his tree. I instantly became calm and relaxed. We stood there and gazed at the heavens together until I woke up.

Upon waking I remembered the dream in its entirety. I contemplated it for a while. I thought about how it had suddenly changed tone from a nightmare to a pleasant experience with Mozart. How I had been terrified the whole dream that someone was trying to kill Mozart and then how he suddenly appeared to be fine. I thought about how the stars were only above his tree and how his tree was shaped oddly like his cage. Then I realized, I would never dream that stars were in one spot in the sky, only he would dream that. I would never dream that a tree was rectangular shaped, only he would dream that. He had come into my dream and transformed it from a nightmare into a wonderful experience!

He Had Come Into My Dream
I rolled over in bed and looked at him. He stood there on top of his cage with the most satisified, smug look on his face. I said to him, "Mozart, you came into my dream last night didn't you?" He filed his beak for a moment and then in his sweet, little voice he chimed out loud quite clearly, speaking each word slowly and surely, "I...said...hello!" Yes, he had said hello alright. He had just popped into my dreams and taken control of the show. He had said hello and so much more.