Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, cont.

Six years after her death, I was unpacking this photo and took a new look at the odd white cloudy area on this photo. Almost instantly, I clearly saw the profile of a Moluccan cockatoo's head and wildly flapping wings.

Here is a close up of the area with the spectral image of Fluffy and her son just above Mozart's head.

Tomorrow, I will zoom in on this area and adjust the contrast so you can see the spectral images better.

Mozart Chronicles: Memoir of Two Moluccans, Pt. 2

I rushed home from work every day to be with her as long as I could. I held her and hand fed her, gave her medicine, promised her it would be all right. On that last day when I rushed in, she had been waiting and an obvious look of relief came over her face as she saw me. I held her. It was clear to me now that this was the end. She fought a little bit, her eyes rolling around in her head, I closed them. "Let go" I whispered and she raised her head up and let out a growl and then she let go.

We returned her body to the vet for a necropsy. Tissues were sent out for a histopathology and eventually, the results came back as confirmed for Proventricular Dilatation Disease. And then I began my whirlwind education with Dr. Branson Ritchie of the Emerging Diseases Research Group of the University of Georgia.

One perk to my job was that we had an ISDN internet connection and would often have a lot of seasonal downtime. While others read horoscopes and gossip columns, I was learning everything I could about viruses and discovered a number of scientific papers by Dr. Ritchie and the EDRG about PDD whose reading required a medical dictionary which I had since I worked at a medical publisher. Flipping through a bird magazine, I saw an add for a 900 number (no longer available) one could call to talk with the Ph.D. veterinarian, Branson Ritchie, about bird health. My phone bill was about to go up. I called Dr. Ritchie regularly and practically begged for information on how to keep my Mozart alive. He explained how viruses worked to me, explained about the immune system and supportive care and the importance of easily digestible high quality foods. He sent me a brochure about PDD with a picture of a Moluccan on the front who had been experimentally infected with PDD. The bird just lay there, unable to move, totally paralyzed. I was determined this would never happen to Mozart.

To ensure ultimate hygiene, Mozart moved into the bedroom with his cage right next to my bed. This way he would be separated from our other animals and their germs and I could monitor his health all the time. I bought a heater and kept the room at 75 degrees at all times. I bought full spectrum lights for the ceiling above him and meticulously cleaned his cage and bowls every day.

I ordered some Harrison's High Potency formula to be Mozart's high quality, highly digestible food while waiting for my vet to locate the prescription Roudybush diet made specifically for PDD birds. Mozart refused to eat this too. The picture of the rotting macaroni in Fluffy's stomach haunted me and I knew I would have to stop feeding him regular food immediately or risk the same fate for him. He wouldn't eat the Harrison's, after all he was a finicky cockatoo with a penchant for cheese. I went to work one day and sat at my desk crying all day. I called my vet and scheduled to have Mozart euthanized the next day. I wasn't going to watch him starve to death like Fluffy. That night as I lay awake in bed crying, I heard Mozart walk over to the dish full of pellets and begin eating them. I canceled the appointment.

to be continued tomorrow...

Pictured above: Mozart, right, preens Fluffy, left, much to her delight during the magical days

Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, Pt. 1

"You know you really should breed him. He's an endangered species and he's wild caught. He's important to the gene pool. He's really a fine specimen, a really big guy."

These words from the parrot rescuer I'd adopted Mozart from came over the phone sounding totally foreign to me. As someone involved with animal rescue, breeding is strongly discouraged. But bird rescue is different. True, breeding is still strongly discouraged for most species not suited for a life in captivity, but in those days, bird overpopulation wasn't as well understood as it is now.

"I thought he had been at a breeder and didn't want to breed?" I asked.

Mozart's rescuer continued, "Yes but cockatoos, especially Moluccans will spend their entire lives in the wild searching for the perfect mate and then mate for life. He probably just didn't like any of the females he'd been put with. It's not like he had any choice," she replied. She was working me over pretty hard it seemed. I thought this must be really important, after all, her resumé was and still is probably the most impressive I've seen for any professional animal handler, including a Master's in animal psychology. She went on, "You know we've searched all over the country to find a teenage wild caught female for him, they're very hard to come by."

Gullible as I was in those days, I began searching immediately for a wild caught female Moluccan cockatoo who needed a home. I thought I'd be searching for years from the way this woman made it sound, but I found one in only a few months. A pair of vets, a husband and wife team, in Minnesota were looking to place their 13 year old Moluccan hen with a nice male. She was very sexually frustrated they said and plucked and shredded her feathers. Mozart's quarantine time was up and it didn't seem like Fluffy needed to go through one coming from such fine vets who had only two birds of their own, a macaw and a middle aged amazon.

I flew to Duluth, Minnesota and arrived in February 1997 on one of the coldest days on record. The vets, who bred show collies on the side, were excited for Fluffy's future and picked me up and brought me to their farm to meet the little lady.

Fluffy was very sweet and took to me immediately. She was completely tame. That night in my hotel room, I gave her a shower and carefully dried her with the hair dryer on cool setting so as not to burn her. We cuddled and allopreened that evening. It was a magical night. It is hard to describe snuggling with a large bird, it's like meeting an angel and getting a big hug. The next day, the vet picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. I had a health certificate and airport carrier and Fluffy was riding in the cabin with me. I had to take her out of the carrier so they could inspect it for bombs (there had been a recent incident with bomb scares on domestic flights) and Fluffy climbed to my shoulder and exulted in the shower of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the other passengers. We became instant celebrities. The flight went well and soon enough we were home in DC.

(pictured above: Fluffy sits atop her brooding box)

to be continued tomorrow...

Mozart Chronicles: The Pink Slug

Slugs are descended from snails and more properly are just snails who have lost their shell. They are mollusks and also referred to as 'molluscans.' They are blind for the most part but can detect light and dark. There are many kinds of slugs living on land and in the sea some with beauty to rival the most beautiful flower. The vision of the many antennaed pink slug Mozart sent me is not so unrealistic as sea slugs do exist with many, many antennae and of as many hues as the visible spectrum (as far as we know). I believe the many glowing antennae symbolized the number of years he had lived in his rainforest home, here only about ten or so appear in this illustration.


Slugs were used in divination by various cultures and also symbolized writing because of the curvy, curious trails they leave. They are a symbol of the Hermetic Path, the ancient way of alchemists, mystics and such.