The Special-ness of a Special-Needs Bird

I am a newly parrot-owned human, slave to two African Greys. As other parrot-owned humans know, we are just staff to these delightfully demanding creatures: maid, butler, and clown are all rolled up into one handy human. In short, they run our homes.

One of my parrots, a Congo African Grey named Jimmy Bob Voltaire, calls “his” cats, luring them over to his cage with sweet sounds of “Raptor, come here, c’mon…it’s okay.” When the cat, Raptor, jumps to the window sill to get closer to Jimmy, he yells loudly, “Raptor, GET DOWN! Don’t mess with Jimmy!” The poor cat does indeed jump down from the window, properly chastised with seemingly hurt feelings. But Jimmy’s Machiavellian manipulation is nothing compared to the Jedi mind tricks that Thumper, the other parrot, plays upon this poor human.

Thumper, my special-needs Timneh hen, coerced me into changing careers—she really did. And although the story of how she accomplished that seems fantastic, every word is true. What follows is the tale of how she achieved complete mastery over her human in the space of a few short weeks. Let it be a warning to other humans who long for freedom from psittacine dominance.

Having never owned a parrot but always fascinated by the prospect, I researched African Greys for half a decade before adopting my two feathered wonders last year. I was intent on adopting a special-needs bird. Because of their limitations, they are more difficult to place in homes. And I wanted to provide a home for a bird who really needed one.

Enter Thumper: a tiny Timneh hen, splay-legged with deformed feet, having only three toes on each foot. She came from a very loving home, so loving that her original mom, a busy gal with a full-time job, a home-based business, and a family, realized the best thing she could do for Thumper would be to place her in a situation where she would get more attention. So Thumper, accompanied by her hatch egg, came to live with me.

As a first-time parrot owner, I was very serious about the responsibilities of caring for a parrot. I arranged to take six days off work to spend time with this new miracle, and prepared a place for her cage. A lovely antique table, covered with a favorite table cloth from a Parisian flea market, seemed like a fitting location for Miss Thumper.

The day she arrived changed my life forever. This tiny little thing was dependant upon me for her very happiness, a responsibility I took to heart. Those first six days I spent with her were magical—hand-feeding her fruit and vegetables, getting bit every day in too many attempts to pet her, submitting toy after toy to her in supplication—“oh please, Miss Thumper…please like this one!” After five days of constantly bothering her, she spoke.

On this memorable Thursday night, I was hand-feeding her cantaloupe. She suddenly stopped munching, cocked her head, and looking up shyly said, “I love that stuff.” And then calmly went back to eating.

I was floored…and proud…and excited…so I called everyone to tell them about how brilliant she was. After that breakthrough, she continued to talk and chatter, constantly. But little did I know of her ability to get exactly want she wanted, and how far she would go to obtain that end.

At the end of our six-day “get acquainted” period, I reluctantly went back to my job. Only a week after my return to work, the boss asked our group to work overtime--12 hours a day. Begrudging the time spent away from Miss Thumper, but needing the money, I reluctantly agreed to work the extra hours. 

One morning during this overtime period, as I was getting ready for work, Thumper watched me getting dressed and asked, “Where ya goin’?” This was a new phrase, but I replied as if I heard it every day from her, and said, “I’m going to work.”

She replied, “Miss you.”

That stopped me in my tracks, but needing to explain my long absences to her, I rambled, “Well, honey…I miss you too, but I have to go to work.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she said in her soft sweet voice, “Thumper go work…”

The plaintive tone coming out of that little grey thing brought tears to my eyes. I stumbled on, giving her lame excuses of having to make money so she could have parrot food, but she wasn’t buying it. She stared at me accusingly as I departed once again, leaving her only the cats and Oprah for company.

As I closed the door, she said “Bye….” At that moment, I resolved I would spend as little time away from her as possible.

It is odd how things work out. The next day my group was called to the company’s Human Resources area and told that our department was being dissolved. Granted, after 14 years of employment with the same company, this news was a shock. But I was determined to be optimistic about the possibilities awaiting me after being released from corporate America.

On the way home after being “dissolved,” Miss Thumper’s sad “miss you” kept resounding in my brain. Remembering her poignant plea of “Thumper go work” caused an instant decision—I would take the leap into a career of freelance writing.

Freelance writing is no picnic. It’s filled with the downs of rejection and the uncertainty of where the next paycheck is coming from. But the upside is that I spend every day, all day, with the Miss Thumper and her new brother, Jimmy Bob Voltaire.

Of course, she highly approves of my new career. There’s been no more emotional manipulation or intentional pulling of the heart-strings. She happily asks me for “pets” whenever she wants, and usually gets them throughout my working day.

Working with Miss Thumper next to me has taught be another lesson. When I adopted her, I thought SHE had special-needs—but oh, contraire! During our last few months of “working” together she has taught me that I’m the one with “special-needs.”

The fluctuating income of freelancing, combined with a lifelong tendency towards depression, has caused me to get “down in the dumps,” gloomily wondering if I am doing the “right thing.” But one afternoon, as I watched Miss Thumper make her awkward, plucky climbs up and down her cage, I finally grasped the lesson she had been teaching me every day. Her deformities cause her to move differently than other birds, but she still gets to the same place---which is anywhere she wants to go.

Her daily insistent, persistent efforts seem to say, “Look, human…this is what we do. We move forward. We just keep moving forward to get where we want to go.”

And so I, like Miss Thumper, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and amazingly, I find myself getting to where I’m going.

Elaine Hutchison
© the WriteSource, 2005