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. 2

We decided to wait a bit to introduce Fluffy to Mozart. At every opportunity though, once she heard him squawk from upstairs, she tried to run or fly upstairs. So we brought his cage downstairs and set them up in neighboring cages. Mozart had been accustomed to snuggling at night with his 'girlfriend' which was actually a large dog toy that oddly resembled a large parrot. Fluffy quickly became jealous of this girlfriend and attacked it one evening severing the rope from which it hung and throwing it to the ground. She would hop back and forth from cage to cage shrieking and leaping like a huge bullfrog. We had never seen a bird hop so far and so high and thought she truly seemed to be a pink velosa raptor.

Mozart was an unwilling suitor. He tried to ignore Fluffy, tried to just sit there and do nothing. But she would have none of it. She began trying to make a nest in the newspapers of her cage so we got her a nestbox made from a half of a large whiskey barrel which we sanded and painted pink for her. Turned upside down in her cage, it seemed ideal. She started laying eggs right away. Much of their relationship was hidden from us but we would eventually catch glimpses of them preening and cuddling each other. Winter evenings that year spent in the living room watching TV or reading were shared with two very large, very pink birds very much in love. Mozart finally came out of his shell and became a loving mate to Fluffy.

But it was not to last. She was diagnosed with a fatal disease thought to be caused by a virus and lived only until that July, losing her battle on July 8, 1997. Her desperate desire to have a mate, lay eggs, have chicks and raise them and her desperate battle to live would haunt me for many months, even years. The day after she died, that hot July afternoon, I found myself sitting on the front stoop looking at what had been her nestbox, now a flower box. We'd taken it away and put it outside and used it as a flower box when she had first gotten sick only a week earlier.

Above it in a hanging flower pot hung the dead remains of a pink impatien plant which was now a year and a half old. A second glance showed me that this flower, meant to only last one season, had suddenly come to life and had one tiny pink flower in full bloom! This impatien was one and a half years old and had lain dead since the harsh winter! Now it was blooming!

I knew it was her soul re-animating the flesh of this flower! I brought the flower pot inside and hung it in the bedroom near Mozart's cage. A knowing, wise look from him was all I needed to be sure of this miracle. Later I told my husband, Christian, about it. He nodded sadly.

Then on the anniversary of her death the following year, the same impatien, having lain dead all winter, bloomed fully again! I was still grieving heavily for Fluffy, tears would well up in my eyes and my heart would seem to squeeze and tighten at the thought of the injustice of her life, waiting 13 years to finally find happiness and to only have it for a few short months. I lay in bed one night sleepless as usual, and rolled over to see Mozart standing on the edge of his cage, in the dark he seemed to glow as he looked down at me with a loving cockatoo smile on his face. Then he turned and walked across the cage and sat next to...himself! Mozart was already over on the other side of the cage! "Mozart!" I called out, "is that Fluffy?" "Yea yea!" he said in his little high pitched voice, "she's here right now!"

to be continued tomorrow...

(pictured: Mozart sits atop his cage with the spectral Fluffy and her chicks flying above and to the right of him)

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.

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.

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: Who Was Mozart the Moluccan?

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. Unlike many male Moluccans in a breeding situation, he never harmed one of the females he was caged with. Instead, he mashed their eggs. So the breeder removed him and brought him inside to be a pet.

There he was ignored for 10 years. When I adopted him the rescue coordinator explained his egg mashing behavior to me. She said they joked that he was gay. But contrary to this, I received my first instantaneous communication from Mozart, "he doesn't want his children to be born in captivity," I told her.

Later when Mozart and I were to appear on the Pet Psychic with Sonya Fitzpatrick, she confirmed that he didn't want any more girlfriends and that for this reason he might be gay. Mozart wouldn't have cared what anyone thought about his sexual preferences, like any good Buddha, as long as he didn't have to propagate under duress.

Mozart Chronicles: Reality or Something Like It

Practical Advice on Modern Living from a Geriatric Cockatoo
Sometimes I tell people how Mozart talked to me, out loud, in English, in complete sentences and fully cognizant of what he was saying, and I get a half-cocked grin in reply, especially from people who have parrots themselves. The ones who have parrots themselves get mad or jealous. Their parrots don't talk to them like that, they say. "Well," I reply, "maybe they don't because they know you think they're just a bird brain or that you think you're some advanced being when actually it's them who are the advanced being."

That's usually the end of the discussion. But sometimes I know the person is a true bird lover, who really does admire the intellectual capabilities of their feathered friends. And to them I say, "Well I think that maybe deep, deep down part of you doesn't really believe they're as intelligent as yourself. You maybe think they are somewhat intelligent but you still think you're smarter." Then that's usually the end of the discussion. Then there are the two or three people I've met and heard about over the years, who believe in the deepest parts of their soul that their precious feathered friends are not only equal in intelligence but also in every other way. And those people and I get really excited when we talk to each other because we've had similar experiences. Then there are those people who nod silently, who 'know' but are afraid to speak up for fear of being labeled a nutty bird owner. And lastly there are the people whom do have these experiences with their feathered friends and simply ignore them, unprepared for what it may mean.

Fourteen Years of Silence Broken
I don't know why Mozart decided to start talking to me this way. He'd never spoken before in his fourteen years of captivity until the day we brought him home. I feel he sensed my deeply seated belief that his life and my life were on equal planes. But, as I've noticed some animals do, he probably watched the movie of my life which is playing above my head in my crown chakra in an endless rerun and saw that one day when I was eighteen years old and walked into a pet store. I hurried through the store looking for a certain kind of fish food for my goldfish, Romulus, when I came around an aisle and stopped dead in my tracks. There in a much too small cage, as is so often the case, in front of me, was a majestic Moluccan King Lory looking out at me.

His eyes held me captive. In them, I saw an intelligence, a sentience, a depth and a sorrow of which magnitude I don't often even see in the eyes of my fellow humans. I choked, his sorrow filled my heart with a profound sadness and a sense of injustice. This is the surge of clairsentience that any true animal lover is familiar with. For weeks afterward, his eyes haunted me. I never forgot him. Today, my heart still pangs with remorse for the fate of this gorgeous, wild being who should have soared his whole life over the mountainous gorges of Seram, Indonesia. So maybe Mozart saw that moment in my life, or other moments like it when I've connected with a nonhuman intelligence and been haunted for days and weeks afterward and been forever changed, forever pivoted into another being's point of view and unable to ever really go a full 180 degrees back to my own, wracked by some gross injustice I was powerless to stop.

But talk to me he did. Not very much at first, just simple stuff like saying 'thank you' and requesting favorite foods. I noticed his pronunciation was not that great though and I set about to help him speak more clearly. Parrots learn more about mimicking the sounds of human mouths by watching how those mouths actually form the sounds than by listening to them. So one afternoon, I set about to teach him one of the hardest sounds for a parrot to make, the 'b' sound, a plosive, as it's called. With my mouth close to his, as he hung off the side of his cage, I said distinctly, "Mozart, you have a black beak. Your beak is big and black," emphasizing the b's. He turned his head to one side and zoomed a big black eye up next to mine and said slowly but clearly in a sweet little voice reminiscent of Felix the cat, "And you don't have one?"

An Intelligence That Mirrors Our Own
My eyes opened wide and my jaw loosened and then dropped. I stared into his eye for a moment or two. In that big black eye, I saw glimmers of wisdom earned from years of jungle living and untold, harrowing adventures in short quick flashes. I thought about how this incredible bird was older than me, older than my parents even, and smart enough to be able to engage in conversation with a totally dissimilar species. But I didn't want to lose this moment. I fumbled and thought 'what do I have instead of a beak?' I parted my lips and bared my teeth, "No I don't have a beak, I have teeth," I said and tapped on my front teeth with my fingernail to show him the hardness of them. His focus turned to my teeth which truly fascinated him. He leaned out, reaching his beak forward and gently tapped one of my big front teeth with the curve of his huge beak. The two biological tools we shared, meant for rending food in some manner, clicked together and then he straightened up. His question was answered. He understood.

During that first week he shared with us, we immediately learned he abhorred any type of activity with the slightest hint of violence to it. One evening we sat back to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Mozart. A favorite scene came on in which two knights engaged in a standing joust. As the knights heaved and hoed back and forth between thrusts of their lances, Mozart imitated and leaned back and forth and groaned and moaned much like anyone you might see watching a prizefighting match. Then one knight put his lance through the eyehole of the other's helmet and gallons of blood then gushed forth out of the lanced knight's helmet. Mozart froze, looked at both us to see our reaction and then screamed! He screamed and screamed in protest until we finally acquiesced and changed the channel. This type of violent entertainment was totally unacceptable to him.

The Parrot Pacifist
We soon learned that other unacceptable, seemingly violent, programming included basketball, hockey, and football. Any hint at all of physical contest and especially prizefights were totally unacceptable for us to watch with Mozart. Even if my husband, Christian, and I were to watch television downstairs with the volume turned down, he still knew what we were watching. We finally figured out he could see everything we could see and hear regardless of where we were physically. He would scream with a loud, angry shriek that was truly deafening. Even cracking an egg to make scrambled eggs on the weekend would elicit an angry shriek from the little Buddha Bird watching us in his mind's eye from upstairs. Our penchant for blowing away virtual people and creatures on my Playstation was just as unacceptable. Finally I would explain to Mozart over and over again, "Motz! (pronounced Motes) They're not real! It's ok! They're not real! It's just a game (movie, etc.)." After several years, Mozart was able to handle television violence and Playstation games a little better but he still had a tolerance threshold. During that time we discovered the antidote for all this horribly upsetting behavior was to watch ballet or Riverdance or some such programming. Elvis movies were a favorite. He stood transfixed in front of the television gently swaying his head back and forth in the true Moluccan cockatoo waltz as he watched Celtic dancers or ballerinas seemingly float across the stage, and Elvis too.

The Humorous Buddhist
As Mozart loosened up a little with his Gandhi-like approach to life, he displayed a sense of humor too. Playing with Chris one evening, he playbit him softly on the thumb. Chris seized the opportunity to admonish our little peace loving friend, "Hey you bit me!" he cried to Mozart in mock indignation, "I thought you were a Buddhist!" Mozart swung his head out near to Chris' and said smilingly, "I am!" After living with Mozart for about four years, I had come to rely on him for practical advice on daily living. Thinking he could foretell future events, I asked him about returning to a job I had very much disliked. "Pat," he said sadly, "don't go back." I ignored his wise advice and went back to that job, needing money very badly at that point. Six months later, I lay sleepless in my bed, pulling my hair out as I reviewed the day's events of working at an abusive corporation. Agonizing over the verbal abuse I dealt with daily, I could think of nothing to ease my mind and remove the heartless corporate vampires from my thoughts. At last, around 3am when all hopes of a restful night's sleep were lost, Mozart piped up from his cage, next to my bed. "Pat!" he said softly, gently, "they're not real."

Relief from Reality
Nothing in the world could have relieved my mental agony at that moment, nothing! But those three little words caused me to burst into hysterical laughter! I buried my face in my pillow and laughed as heartily as I have ever laughed in my whole life!

Of course he was right! They really weren't real! They were just hollow shells of non-awareness, judgmental sticks in the mud, stuck in the drudgery of the corporate rat race! They were just caught in the matrix of a slave world where people expend almost their entire lives in pursuit of the bottom line trapped behind a desk for fifty or sixty hours a week like captive birds in a pet store. I was still real. I hadn't sold out and lost my humanity in the process and caused others to suffer mental agony for the purposes of my own advancement on the corporate ladder.

I had learned from my sweet feathered friend that there is an entire reality of intelligence and altruism existing in natural harmony with the universe, the world of nature. I had learned that animals and every living being attunes easily, with almost no effort, to the universal intelligence to achieve whatever goal it sets for itself according to its desires. I had learned that wild animals living in nature were as evolved as they wanted to be and that we seemed to be more a pawn of our own evolution than truly free within it. The real world was the world where Mozart had come from, the rainforest, and in that place, spoken language is not a measure of intelligence, it is a veil that conceals the meaning of life which is simply to feel alive. I went to work the next day and put a sticky note up next to my computer monitor which read in large, bold letters, "They're not real." When the corporate vampires walked by, they saw it and looked unsettled. Who knows what they thought. It was their turn to lose some sleep.

Mozart Chronicles: Magical Mystery Tour

Mozart's Magical Mystery Tour

by Patti Henningsen

May 27, 1784
Vienna, Austria

Wolfgang Mozart skips down a crowded Vienna street, coins jingling in his waistcoat pocket. Times are good. He's just completed composition of a lovely piano concerto in G Major. The main theme of it plays repeatedly in his head as he contemplates the structure of the credenza he'll add to the finale.

He passes a pet shop, a beastly place packed with filthy cages and various animals barely surviving. Suddenly, the composer reels about! He looks up at a bird cage dangling above his head and stares incredulously at the starling therein who is boldly and defiantly whistling the main theme from the concerto he has just written!

"Das war schon," he proclaims ("That was beautiful!"). In the compulsive daze which most people find themselves in during the moments they purchase an animal they understand little about, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart hands over 34 Kreuzer to the shopkeeper and proceeds homeward with his new pet starling. As soon as he arrives home, he jots down the song his starling has been singing. It is nearly identical to the theme of his just-completed concerto, not yet sold or even published.1

For three years, the bird and composer would be closest of friends and eventually, after the bird's death, Mozart would give him a first-class funeral. Mozart himself would end up in an unmarked, common grave with the ink still drying on his Requiem Mass--perhaps the greatest travesty of genius in history.

December 10, 1997

Vienna, Virginia

He's Leaving Home

After ten years, Don and Jane have finally decided to donate their maverick Moluccan cockatoo to Parrot Rescue. For a decade, he's perched silently atop his living room cage watching their children grow up and learn to speak. And watched the two macaws across the room receive all the attention he, as a wild-caught, semi-tame bird, cannot accept. His wildness has kept him at arm's length from the deep emotional bonding his species demands from their companions. Don and Jane are tired of feeling guilty and place a call to Dede, the Parrot Rescue coordinator. The bird they call Conan is picked up and on his way to four months of foster care while an adoptive owner is sought out.

Through a truly strange, serendipitous event, I make the acquaintance of Dede in person one day. We have actually known each other several years through online correspondence--we just didn't know we were practically neighbors. I tell her I want to adopt a large bird, as I already have two medium-sized parrots. My Amazon couple are starting to need me less and less as their pair bond deepens. The male, Pumpkinhead, now about seven years of age, has reached sexual maturity. I know it will be several years, if not more, before he returns to his previous, loving self and craves my attention as he did when he was three months old. After convincing my husband, Chris, that we should get a cockatoo, Dede tells me about this 'huge, pink Moluccan' she wants to adopt out to an experienced parrot person, like me.

I've Got a Feeling

That first night, we put the bird we had decided to call Mozart in a cage in our bedroom where it is quiet and peaceful. It was recommended that he be quarantined from our other birds for at least three months. Mozart, the big, pink cockatoo, would feel safe here and more like we were all roosting together. In the wild, according to villagers on the island Mozart is from, large families of cockatoos sleep together in their hollowed-out tree nests and snore loudly all night.2 Luckily, Mozart did not snore, but about 3:15am on the dot, he softly began imitating the sound of an alarm clock. He would do this every night at this precise time for the next week. I discovered that's what time his foster father got up every morning to leave for an early shift. The precision of Mozart's alarm clock call was eerie. I began awaking at 3:14AM and was amazed that he began his alarm call the split second that our clock turned to 3:15.

I'm Looking Through You

But this feat did not compare to what happened about 4:30AM that first morning. (Luckily, it was Saturday and we could sleep in!) Chris and I began stirring about the same time just before dawn. We were both awake and heard the sound of Mozart eliminating and the plop! of his droppings on the cage floor. Amazingly, this was followed with Mozart uttering, 'Doo doo! Good boy!' We both shot straight up in bed, 'Did you hear that?î I yelled to my husband. 'Yes! He said what Pumpkinhead always says!' Mozart not only was talking for the first time in his fourteen years of captivity--with perfect enunciation I might add--but he had somehow picked up on the phrase I'd been using for ten years to potty-train my other parrots (yes, they can do that!). How did he do this? He hadn't even seen my other birds and came into the house when they were already sleeping so he couldn't have heard them either.

What was going on here? I was totally spooked. I actually began to feel afraid of this huge, angelic looking creature who somewhat resembled a wedding cake. Softly scalloped tones of pastel coral and buttercup blend together all over his feather-cloaked body giving him an ethereal, unworldly beauty. For weeks I would stare at him for long periods like Danté beholding Beatrice. He would continue to speak during the next week, and ever on after that. Sitting near him, transfixed by his rose-like beauty, I wondered endlessly about his odd abilities.

Do not curse the king, even in your thought; Do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; For a bird of the air may carry your voice, And a bird in flight may tell the matter.

Ecclesiastes 10:20

Unable to sleep anymore since I had brought this unusually talented bird into my life, I lay awake thinking all night instead of sleeping--as I am wont to do and as is my curse in life. Many thoughts swam through my head; I thought about the saying, 'A little bird told me...,' I thought about the legendary Merlin (the magical owl friend of King Arthur), I thought about Old Abe, the battle Eagle of the Union Army during the Civil War, I thought about Mozart. I queried silently to myself in my head, 'I wonder if Mozart's telepathic?' 'Yes!' he proclaimed from his perch, answering my thought question aloud, his first utterance all day. I froze in fear where I lay. My mind raced, 'Are you really?' I thought again. 'Yes! Yes!' he once again answered aloud. Two more times I asked him and twice more he answered affirmatively, 'Uh-huh,' and 'Yeah Yeah Yeah!!!!!' In the cold, dark room, I panicked, totally spooked and frightened by this revelation. I passed out from fear.

Across the Universe

The things I continue to learn during the next three years from my precious pink cockatoo, who happens to be an endangered species, would reverberate through my life and the lives of my family and friends. I was brought kicking and screaming to the conclusion that science as we know it falls far short of understanding even the rudiments of the natural world. And it would remind me, ever so oddly, of the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his starling and what this genius of long ago must have discovered for himself from his little irridescent-feathered friend. To both Mozarts, I say, voila!

---

1 Sturnus, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring-Summer 1993), "Mozart's Fine Feathered Friend," by Malcolm Gladwell. North American Starling Fanciers Association.

2 BirdTalk, May 2000, pp. 76-83, "Spice Birds," by P. B. Henningsen. Fancy Publications.

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Mozart's 2nd Coming

Well at the tail end of 2005, a local parrot rescue called to see if I knew of shelter for a boisterous Moluccan foster, 'the worst they'd ever had.' You always hear stuff like that when it comes to Moluccans, the worst, the loudest (actually I think macaws are louder), the meanest, the sweetest and the most extreme parrot there is.

Partially true in all respects. To take in such a Moluccan, one must be a devotee of the species and believe me, for simply love of this bird and not for monetary or self-glorified experts, there are very few of us. Who just love the bird for who they are, a Moluccan, a noisy, demanding, clever and yet impossibly dear little pink dragons. Dragonkeepers be we, we Moluccaners.

And so now we have a second pink dragon in our Sanctuary. We were told that her name is Mozart and she is 21 years old, originally from the Seattle area where she belonged to a magician. How interesting, and now she is here at Sparkling Hearts Sanctuary rehabilitating from years of solitude and darkness.

Mrs. Mozart






Not that much has changed for her here yet. She demands to be covered up or left alone for large portions of the day, yet she seems happy with this. She is a beauty isn't she? Already, we're having such wonderful experiences with her. She is warm and gentle, does love people and sits still and quiet as long as someone is in the room with her. Very well mannered, she likes to take part in conversation too, adding comments here and there, "yea..." head bobbing in agreement with you.

I was mystified by the reappearance of a Mozart Moluccan. I knew there were a number of them. Funny thing is, as soon as we got her in the van when we picked her up, she acted just like he used to. Same squawks, chuckles and whispers. She was so well-behaved in the van coming home, it was amazing. We all liked each other right away and it's stayed that way ever since.