The Rabbit Hole

Do the Math - Part 1

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:48:00 +0000

To help explain the previous post about Sparty and the Culuh, here is a little background info on Pumpkinhead...

DO THE MATH, part 1

Pumpkinhead and Guff have lived together and with me since 1989. They are orange wing amazons and my heart and soul, respectively. They know me better than anyone on this Earth.

When Mozart first came to live with us and I subsequently discovered his telepathic abilities, my first reaction was to think he was a genius, a bird genius. Surely he must be a magician, a totally unique creature to be able to read the minds of humans and converse like one!

"Surely he must be a magician..."

I was unaware that my thoughts were rolling through the population of my animal sanctuary like the evening tide. There were many unusual reactions to my supposition about Mozart. Among them, Pumpkinhead, I would discover along the way, was piqued that I thought Mozart was special just because he could read my thoughts. So Pumpkinhead set about to show me that Mozart was just an ordinary old cockatoo no smarter, perhaps wiser, but no smarter than any other bird, or beast for that matter.

He began to seize every opportunity to show me that he was just as talented as Mozart. One day I discovered to my dismay that Guff had a bad cold. It was the weekend and my vet was on vacation. But I did have some medicine that Mozart was currently taking and this seemed to be the only medicine ever prescribed for my birds so I decided to give some to Guff. I knew what exact weight Mozart was when he had been prescribed the medicine and the exact dose, and I knew Guff's exact weight. So I sat down next to Pumpkinhead with a piece of paper and a pencil. I wrote down a little algebraic equation so I could figure out the dose Guff would need.

"...he was just as talented as Mozart"

As I scribbled, Pumpkinhead leaned his head over and studied the paper with one eye zooming in on it. Distinctly he said with great pronouncement, "Math."
My pencil froze in my hand. I took a quick breath and looked out the window. In my head I thought, "I think the bird just said 'math' but maybe I didn't hear him right, after all it's very hard for parrots to say the 'th' sound so I must be hearing things."

I returned to my figures. But again, as distinctly, or perhaps even more so than before, Pumpkinhead said in his best voice, sounding for all the world like a scholar of linguistics, "Math."

There was no doubt this time. He had said 'math' to me as I sat there doing an algebra problem. Thoughts swirled into my head from his, a sort of telepathic transference. I looked out the window again and had a chilly feeling that things would never be the same. Everything in my world had just changed, again. Another bird had changed everything.

"Everything in my world had just changed, again"

to be continued

Sparty and the Culuh

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Spartacus Macaw is an amazingly intelligent bird. This 9 year old macaw's intelligence rivals that of my own. Within days of coming here almost five years ago, he learned our resident amazon parrot's entire vocabulary. You can have a conversation with Sparty with no problem. The thing about understanding a parrot's accent (yes accent) is that they talk in English really, really, REALLY fast.

Here's an example of a conversation I once had with the Blue Goose himself.

I started to walk out of the room.

Sparty: 'what are you gonna do now?'

Me: 'I'm going into the kitchen to make some food.'

Sparty: 'is it good?'

Me: 'yea I guess so'

Sparty: 'UH!!!!' (his word for food is borrowed from Pumpkinhead, it's the sound of a burp which is the syllable 'uh'. Sparty yells this when his pellet bowl is empty or when he smells something cooking he wants to try.

Or if he knows what the food is he wants, he just yells that word. Like 'taco' or 'pizza' or 'chocolate' (he only gets a little chocolate a couple times a year). But he yells 'chocolate' a lot. He really, really likes chocolate.

Once I gave him a sip of Kool Aid and he yelled "MMM! Sugah!"

Sparty is sad sometimes that he doesn't get to be a sun bird, a bird who is up during the day like all other birds. But he's used to our schedule now and was sleepy today and wanted to sleep.

When he sees the light of day, he says 'culuh' which is 'color' mispronounced. Remember what I said about parrot accents?

He got that from Pumpkinhead. Long ago, I was teaching Pumpkinhead the colors in a manner similar to how Alex the Grey was taught the colors by Dr. Pepperberg. That's another story but ever since those days, when Pumpkinhead wants to the light turned out at night, he says 'stop culuh'. Makes sense doesn't it?

Now what kind of brain put those ideas together? Black, or darkness, is the absence of color right? Yea takes a genius, more like takes a bird! Pumpkinhead is one pretty smart cookie.

And Sparty is like the Einstein of birds. But he says 'culuh' as in let's have some please and no more 'stop culuh.' But Sparty doesn't complain. He is such a good boy. He is the best bird on Earth and he knows it.

Dreams of Jessie Spells "Trouble"

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Well I wanted to let that previous post just sit there a long time and look glorious. I just think my Jessie GSD is so beautiful. I love her so much. She is my wolf sister! We are as close as a person and their dog could be.

Oh sure I love my Rocky GSD, her brother too! He's my hunka bunkah! He's my Hollywood hero! And my Little Man, Felix the Schipperke! And Wacky Macky, my biological dog! But me and Jess have something special.

She came to me in my dream last night and showed me herself as a puppy which of course, I did not get to know her as. How I wish I had know both of these german shepherds as puppies, they wouldn't fight now, they'd be best friends. Well they don't fight now but they would if I didn't keep them separate all the time.

We're so used to that now. Anyway, in the dream we were all at my folks and I was telling them how we were going to rename Jessie "Trouble".

This is Jessie's way of telling me that trouble is coming. She is tired of my folks' dog, Jaime, being here and getting all the attention. Jessie is jealous and upset. Trouble is coming and her appearing as a puppy in the dream clearly means that she's feeling emotional and insecure more now than ever.

I will have to go buy some liver today and make her some special treats. I'm a lousy cook but the great thing about dogs is that they wouldn't know a good cook from a lousy one like me.

So I will spoil you today my Jessie. I'll do something extra special to let you know that you are my Stands With a Paw!

Sanctuary GSD Jessie featured in German Shepherd Magazine!

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:58:00 +0000

Sanctuary Dog Jessie (AKC name "Stands With a Paw") is featured in the new issue of German Shepherd magazine by Dog Fancy!

You see that headline "Natural Leaders"? That is for the story about Jessie which starts on page 12 and is entitled, "The Power of Positivity" by Pat Miller. It starts off, "Jessie didn't have the best start in life. When Patti Henningsen adopted the 15-month old German Shepherd Dog, the dog had already been rejected from 3 homes. A professional pet photographer, animal communicator and veteran rabbit rescuer, Henningsen had long been attracted to nobility of the fabled Shepherd Strongheart, star of several Hollywood films in the 1920s..." The article goes on to explain the whole operant conditioning theory pioneered by B.F. Skinner and closes with descriptions of Jessie's positive training experience. And her photo runs on page 18!

This issue is a special issue of the Popular Dogs series called "Training Secrets for the (dog breed). Wow! Jessie's 15 minutes of fame!

We are so proud of all the progress Jessie is making under the positive training plan outlined for her by Miller and now includes counter conditioning and desensitization of her toward her brother, Rocky, whom she is not so glad has rejoined her in her new, forever home.

Jessie even cries out his name "Roggy!" when she's upset and she wants to love him but her jealousy and owner guarding of me prevents her from enjoying a normal pack environment. She is coming around though and you can read me about this soon right here on this blog!

Alex the Grey Passes Into Spirit

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:12:00 +0000

I have been a fan of Alex the Grey for over 20 years. I studied everything I could about him ever since I first heard of him all those years ago.

I am very saddened by his passing and can only say that the world has lost an important emissary from the winged beings, the angelic realm. He was courageous and also just a bird. Brilliant but still wanting his love and attention. His life as a scientific experiment was an emotionally taxing one for such a sensitive species of parrot.

Yet his contribution to the world and the furtherance of animal cognition and awareness is priceless and trail blazing. Never again will there be one like Alex. And yet, the irony is that there have been many, many like him who were never heard by a scientist and so who are discounted and forgotten. Alex' life is a tribute to all of them, each and every single one of the animals who showed us that they are as aware and as real as we.

It is the vast void of scientific knowledge that makes what is real into what is simply transcendent of objective observation.

Like any bird...

Chiquita the Buddhess

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:35:00 +0000

Chiquita, our space cat, passed away naturally on Saturday, August 25th, just shy of her 18th birthday from renal disease. She was always the sweetest cat that anyone had ever met and she touched many, many lives.

Chiquita was abandoned by her owners who moved and left her behind in December 1999 along with 2 other cats (Boba Fett, Amidala), whom we still have, and two rabbits (oh fateful day!) whom of course were our first rabbits (Jar Jar, Darth), and two parakeets (Luna, Skywalker), whom we also took in. We would have taken the iguana they left as well but he did not survive the abandonment.

Before we knew Chiquita’s name, we always called her ‘the Lolly cat’ because she had the same markings as our white collie, Lolly. We would often see Chiquita sitting on top of the roof of her house where she loved to sun herself. She was well known in that neighborhood and fed by all the residents as her owners never cared for her or fed her. She was the cat who made you love cats and her beauty was unparalleled, it was breathtaking and stunning, from the bottom of her black-padded feet to the tip of her Norwegian Forest cat ears.

In 2003, Chiquita had a dental cleaning and stopped eating for nearly six weeks. She developed fatty liver disease and had to have a feeding tube installed in her neck and I fed her tiny amounts of food every hour on the hour for 10 hours a day for two months. All the vets had given up on her. My stubbbornness finally had value and she began eating again well after the window that the literature previously observed recovery, two months later.

She pulled the feeding tube out herself and started eating dry food (of all things!). We had some extraordinary experiences during that time. I remember losing hope myself and asking, “Chiqui, why won’t you eat!!!?” She showed me that she had an orange squid in her stomach. Then I went to check on her and she had pulled the feeding tube out of her neck and thrown it on the floor. It was orange. Another time, when the tube was still in, I fed her a little bit too much and she threw up. She kept throwing up and finally I asked, “Chiqui are you done?” The feeding tube acted like a microphone for deep down in her throat and she spoke out loud in English, “I don’t know” in a halting manner.

But although her liver fully recovered, her kidneys had been irreparably damaged and we began a long journey into becoming fluid in sodium chloride.

Her kidneys were treated with herbs from the wonderful herbalist Debbie Hoyt and “Chiqui” nearly sprang back 100% again. Four years of fluids though, will wear you down. Debbie helped her beat a urinary tract infection which Chiqui had been plagued with for nearly her entire life.

Before she became our cat, she became known throughout her neighborhood as the cat who wouldn’t kill. Unlike all the other outdoor cats, Chiqui wouldn’t kill baby birds or mice or any living thing. And so it was that she was our ‘upstairs’ cat who could be trusted to snuggle up next to the macaw or the tiny parrotlets without a single devious thought crossing her mind. She was the epitome of benevolence, the most spiritually wise and wonderful cat imaginable. She was our space cat, our astral-projecting feline tip toeing on a bridge of light between the dimensions, one foot in this world and one foot in the netherworld, all the time. You could see it in her eyes.

We would often say to her, “Put in a good word for us Chiquita.”

Chiquita has served as one of the animal shamans for my animal communication practice now for the last five years. She will continue to do so although she is in Spirit. In fact, she has always been in Spirit, it was just her body that tethered her soul here for a little while so I could drink up her majesty and wisdom. She was my snow leopard, my Buddhess, my Tibetan princess.

Our lives will never be the same. An era has ended. Namaste Chiquita. See you at the big party at the Rainbow Bridge.

I’ll be seeing you.

Rocky's Change of Heart

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:49:00 +0000

On July 13, I wrote about Rocky, my German Shepherd Dog puppy, and how he spoke to me out loud in English.

"As I prepared to leave with Jessie tonight for her positive reinforcement class, I realized I would have to crate Rocky. He is so hyper and I knew he'd be so strung out from Jessie leaving that he would be better off sitting safely in his crate. As I locked him up, he howled in a tortured, high-pitched voice. It's hard to translate into the written word, but it sounded something like 'i row ruh oo, i row ruh oo, i row ruh oo!' and became more and more high pitched until the words became clear, "I doan luh yoo, I doan luh yoo, I doan luh you" over and over as if to scold me for leaving."

Well, today I had to crate Rocky, and his sister Jessie, and Felix, the Schipperke, while I went inside because I had all sorts of papers I was filing on the table and Rocky, in the last few days, has taken to jumping on the table! At the coercion of Felix, he then tosses down items for Felix to shred. Felix, of course, being a cat-fox-dog-bat creature, can hop on the table any time he pleases. But he finds it more entertaining to send Rocky up there and just finds it fun, in general, to command the other dogs in feats of mischief.

So, not trusting any of them except for Macintosh, I crated them all and headed inside with Mac to download some new tunes before I returned to filing.

That's when Rocky started talking again. The tortured, high-pitched voice...this time had a different message for me--"I luh you...I luh you...I luh you!!!" I smiled and continued in to download some music. What a difference a month can make. We've only had Rocky since Memorial Day weekend, so I don't blame him for not loving me until now.

Later, when we had all gone out for romps and then were back in and I was at my filing again, Rocky came up to me and put his huge head next to mine where I sat and looked at me so earnestly with those bright eyes.

"So, Rocky, you love me now eh?" I asked him. I was answered with a big, sloppy lick that went from my chin to my forehead for an answer.

I kissed him back before I went inside to clean my glasses.

Romulus: The Old Man in the Sea

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:06:00 +0000

My name is Romulus and I'm an Asiatic Veiltail Carp or goldfish. I am 13 years old! I could live to be 25!

I am over a foot long now! Most people do not realize how long goldfish can live if they let us.

My human rescued me from a tank full of goldfish meant to be turtle food or food for bigger fishes. She brought me home and added me to her 10 gallon fishtank which was on top of her piano.

Well, I disappointed her bitterly when I killed all of the Angelfish and Swordfish in the tank with me. She wasn't that knowledgeable about fish, otherwise she would have known that I would do this--plus there was just enough room for me in that tank!

However, she admired my strength and beauty and took very good care of me. Each night, she would practice the piano--remember my tank was on top of it--and I would critique her playing. When she would make a mistake, I would thrash angrily and stare viciously at her. So she would try very earnestly to play beautifully. I especially loved Chopin for his flowing notes to which I would stretch my fins and yawn quite widely! I do NOT like Bach though because his music is so choppy, that is more for humans than fish!

Making Waves to Music

At the end of each practice session (some of them lasted eight hours or more), my human would play my own special song she always played just for me. I knew then that she was finished practicing and would wag my tail. Yes! I do! That song was Mozart's "Ah Tutti Contenti," from The Marriage of Figaro.

After five years of being in that tank, I had grown to be nearly six inches long and my human decided to get me a bigger tank. I moved into a 29 gallon tank with large blue gravel which I enjoyed piling into mountains and rearranging every week. My human was now becoming much smarter about fish care--measuring the pH in my tank and adding only distilled water during water changes, which she'd do every month.

Someone to Call My Own

But I was becoming lonely. My human now had two parrots to whom she was paying more attention. She didn't come over as often and pet me (yes, she'd put her hand in the tank and I would swim under her hand for a pet). So she decided to get me a mate. That brought Rhiannon, the egg-shaped goldfish, into my lonely life. Rhiannon grew very quickly and soon was the size of a honeydew melon! We became very chummy but needed more room so we moved again--this time into a 55 gallon tank! Now I'm over a foot long!

I still listen to my human practice the piano when she has time. We have known each other 13 years now and that is a long time for a fish and a human. I know her parrots pretty well too. They like to look at me in the tank and I like to look at them. I'll swim over to near where they're sitting and weÕll stare at each other communicating and exchanging ideas. It's fun!

Taking care of me is a LOT of work and is also expensive. My human has to spend nearly a whole day a month cleaning my tank and measuring ammonia and nitrite levels in my water. She is careful not to use tap water in my tank, which can contain residual chemicals from winter runoff (do you humans really drink that stuff?) which can kill me rather quickly. Actually, once I got tuberculosis from this and my human nursed me through it. Not many fish survive that! She was vigilant though and I made it!

pictured above: Romulus, the goldfish, lived to be 13 years old!

Communicating With Fish

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 05:59:00 +0000

Animals have been trying to communicate to me all my life as they try to do with most people, we just don't get it. I guess one of the first times they really got through was when I developed a relationship with my goldfish, Romulus. Yes, it was rather a shock to get communication from a fish, that was the last place I expected it to come from. But it made sense, really because these fish were kept as pets for centuries by the Chinese and I was just discovering why.

The first thing I noticed about Romulus after he had grown rather large were his soulful eyes. Then I would notice his reactions to the music I played on my piano. He showed a distinct preference for some types of music which when played he would stretch his fins out and 'yawn' as fish do when they are supremely content.

Romulus dances to the sounds of Chopin He seemed angry, too, when I would make a mistake or play a type of music that did not have a flowing quality to it, like Bach. Sometimes, if the mistake was particularly displeasing or the music very choppy, he would slap his tail on the water's surface and splash me! It is hard to deny that interspecies communication is going on here!

Romulus became ill one year with tuberculosis and required lots of medication and careful water changes. He survived but spent much of the time hunched in a corner. I would sit by this corner and put my face up to the glass and wave a finger at him. He would wave a fin back at me.

There was now no question in my mind that we were 'talking' to each other. But I had no idea what we were saying. I just knew he could see me and recognize me and would wave to me. I also became fond of petting him. Yes I would put my hand down into the tank and as he swam by, I would gently touch his scales. He didn't really react to this, he didn't try to avoid the contact though. His scales felt slimy of course but also smooth as silk and this fascinated me.

I became very attached to this fish and his mate, Rhiannon, and my memories of them will be ones I always treasure. Romulus lived 13 long years and before he died, he went back to his corner until the end. After he was gone, Rhiannon spent a lot of time in that corner too, grieving for her companion, a fish.

Mozart Chronicles: Fluffy's Ghost

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:28:00 +0000

In this image, the contrast has been maximized to highlight the spectral images. I have added a circle around the part of the image where you can see the profile of Fluffy's head, and triangles where her flapping wings can be seen. Also, her son's smaller profile is highlighted in red. Compare this to the image I posted yesterday.

Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, cont.

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:24:00 +0000

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. 3

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:49:00 +0000

Carefully I followed Dr. Ritchie's instructions and talked with my veterinarian about what I had learned. He agreed to aggressively treat Mozart's disease. Mozart began a long term course of antibiotics and antifungals, including a triple whammy cocktail my vet formulated just for Mozart. For six months he would stay on this to fight the initial onset of the disease. And it seemed to work. However, his neurological signs seemed to worsen. The infamous "PDD twitch" took hold of him and wouldn't let go. His head would twitch out of control. I decided to call on his body's reflexes once more as I had with the force feeding fear reflex. Instead of yelling at him to get him to involuntarily eat, this time when he twitched, I would squirt him with a squirt bottle. Mozart realized that he actually could stop the twitching if he really wanted. Very soon, just the sight of the squirt bottle would stop the twitching, and soon after that just my looking at the squirt bottle was enough and so on until finally the command 'no twitching!' was all it took to help him stop.

Eventually, he had trouble digesting the coarse-size pellets he'd been eating and had to switch to the cockatiel-sized pellets, or fine grind. He would stay on this diet for the next five years. But alas, the malabsorptive properties of the disease took their toll and after five years, Mozart was blind and could barely walk across his cage. He was depressed and only a shadow of the magnificent wild caught Moluccan he had once been. And finally one night he had a horrible seizure. I knew he'd fallen from his perch a couple of times when I wasn't around but this was the first time I'd witnessed one of his seizures. The total lack of self control was so undignified for this regal creature, the ignominious fall to the floor, the helplessness was more than I could take. On May 30, 2002, Mozart left this world while I held his claw in the lab at the vet's office with just myself and my vet and his two grown daughters in attendance. I wrapped him in a peach towel and placed him in the refrigerator to await cremation. I kissed the top of his head one last time and said goodbye to the greatest love and the most noble creature anyone has ever known.

Patti Henningsen is a professional animal communicator and freelance writer residing in Maryland with her 2 amazons, 2 ringneck parakeets, 2 parrotlets, Moluccan cockatoo and a macaw. She has written for BirdTalk, several animal welfare related newsletters and formerly was a national music critic. She avidly studies animal communication and energy healing to enhance the lives of her flock.

Mozart Chronicles: Memoir of Two Moluccans, Pt. 2

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 10:07:00 +0000

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: Memoir of Two Moluccans, Pt. 1

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:27:00 +0000

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.

Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, Pt. 3

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:31:00 +0000

Incredulous, I sat up while the moonlight filtered into the room through the cracks in the shade, and looked long and hard at Mozart and the ghost of Fluffy. Finally, Mozart shifted on his feet and said, "Pat!" and then very firmly emphasizing each word, "Write it down."

"Yea yea I will Motzie." I marvelled at the specter of Fluffy snuggled up next to her great love, Mozart. I had never seen a ghost before or since.

And on the second anniversary of her death, we found ourselves coming home that day with arms full of new flowers and once again hanging a pot full of pink flowers up over her nestbox on the stoop. "There it is," Chris said proudly after hanging it, "the Fluffy flower."

"And today is the day you know, July 8th," I said. I knew he hadn't remembered consciously.

"That's weird," he frowned and looked at the flower. That evening we sat on the patio and Chris softly played guitar while I sang the song we had written three years earlier for our Fluffy girl.

Fly away Fluffy fly Away from the pain, away from the hurt
Fly away and don't forget to come back this same day
Be Free Be Free Be Free

It had been six years since Fluffy had died and now Mozart was gone too. We had just moved into our new house and I was making sure that precious photos of them were carefully stored in a safe place. Amid all the boxes to be unpacked, I wanted to put a photo of Mozart, deceased only weeks before, on a nearby box as I unpacked so I could see my dear old friend.

I picked the little framed picture up and noticed again for the umpteenth time, the white blob in the photo above Mozart's head. Gazing absentmindedly at it, I realized I could see the shape of a cockatoo's beak and head and then a dark spot where the eye would be and wings flapping. It was Fluffy! Her spectral image had been in this photo all this time and I had never realized it!

I ran to show the picture to Chris. "Chris look at this white blob right here, do you see this dark spot?" He saw it immediately, "It's Fluffy!" he yelled, "Oh my God!" He gave me a startled hug and both of our eyes misted up. I looked at the calendar and gave another start, "And today is the day!" We looked out at the sizzling hot day and waved to the pink sunset, "Namaste Fluffy! Namaste Mozart!"

I returned to the task of unpacking and carefully unpacked the gold plated mug from Tiffany's which an opera composer had once given to me and in which I had kept Fluffy's eggs all this time. I picked up the egg which sat on top of the two other eggs in the cup. Holding it in my hand, with a sudden sting of sorrow and remorse I realized it was heavy and not hollow like the others. It had been fertile! Inside it were the remains of a baby chick, Mozart and Fluffy's child! I cried suddenly, I had not only lost Fluffy, then Mozart but also their baby who also appears spectrally in the photograph mentioned above with his back toward the camera, just below Fluffy's head as the brightest spot in the picture.

That night I dreamt of a golden haired boy who was trying to call me at work. I didn't want to take the call and my assistant said "it's from a young man who says you met him only right after his father died." I knew it was Mozart's son, who had died in the shell of that egg, contacting me from wherever it was that he and Motz and Fluffy all lived now; Camelot.

Mozart Chronicles: The Fluffy Flower, Pt. 2

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:26:00 +0000

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

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 05:56:00 +0000

"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

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:04:00 +0000

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!

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 06:05:00 +0000

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!

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:41:00 +0000

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

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:27:00 +0000

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

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:56:00 +0000

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?

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:12:00 +0000

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

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:21:00 +0000

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.

Mozart Chronicles: Moonbeams & Cockatoo Dreams

Bright Eyes Sanctuary — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 10:02:00 +0000

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.