Posts Tagged ‘African Grey’

And lets none of us shed a tear.

A disclaimer: I am generally anti-death penalty- I understand the whole “I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for that scum to live out his life in prison” argument, but (guilt or innocence aside) since the automatic appeals process costs 21 times just giving him 3-hots-and-a-cot, I typically fall on the ‘let ‘em rot in prison’ side of the fence.

But this guy? He’s a peach. Let’s see what he has to say for himself, eh?

Earlier in his conversation with the detectives, he attempted to explain why he had been enraged.

“She wasn’t calling me back, you know, and I know that sounds silly, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I wanted her to talk with me. She wouldn’t talk with me.”

Magee chased his wife’s car in Tall Timbers, ramming it until she crashed into a tree, according to testimony from various residents who witnessed it.

Magee then walked up to her car. “Oh Jamie, no, no, no!” she screamed, according to Delbert Bryars, a neighbor.

Magee said he and his wife “were fighting over the gun and it went off.”

He shot his wife, point-blank, in the left temple with a 12-gauge shotgun, according to testimony and authorities. The shot blew the back of her head off, St. Tammany Chief Deputy Coroner Michael DeFatta testified Saturday.

“And then I looked at Zach. It was already bad, man, it was already bad,” Magee said. He shot his son twice, once in the back and once in the head, as the boy tried to run away, according to witnesses and DeFatta’s re-creation of the events.

Magee then fired his shotgun into the car where his two daughters were hiding. The shot hit Ashleigh, 8, in the shoulder. Aleisha, 7, likely was spared injury because she was playing dead in the back seat.

Explaining that final shot, Magee said: “I seen what happened to Zach and I just finished.”

Uh, question: if you’re “fighting over” a shotgun,hnow do you get shot point blank in the temple?

Then the coward ran. The cops chased him down in Florida several days later. That means you’ve got several states of good ol’ boys to pass through. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. Quite frankly, I thought the cops might lose a couple of pieces of ‘im before they got him back here…like, oh, maybe his head. But no. He made it here and through prison for the last two years and all the way to the trial.

Apparently he cried all day long while they deliberated over the death penalty. For himself, of course, and what a horrible life he’s had, and fear for his own skin. His parents argued that putting him to death would leave a hole in his two surviving daughters lives- that one day, they’d want answers and he wouldn’t be around to give them.

Personally, I don’t know if any amount of counseling would ever give me the strength to talk to the man who killed my mother and brother.

She was also my poor Zulu’s original owner, so I feel tangentially attached to this case. The papers hadn’t shown photos of any of these people, and seeing them was a bit of a shock, particularly Mr. Creepy there. And she and her son look sweet and kind.

When I wandered into Birds Unlimited that day, I found out that Adrienne’s mother had custody of the two surviving kids. She’d had a nervous breakdown over it, and the little girl was still in the hospital 3 months later. The mother and son were still in the morgue because the family didn’t have the money to bury them, and no one knew how they were going to pay the hospital bills. They were deep in debt and much deeper in shock, selling off everything they could, including Adrienne’s beloved birds, one of which was Zulu.

Please don’t get me wrong- I am in no way equating what Zulu went through with what the rest of the family dealt with. But I can still hear his little birdy voice booming in a deep baritone “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” and “BITCH!” and “I said shut UP!” It was a little slice of what went on in that house, and it sent chills up my spine. The terror in that house- human and animal alike- must have been beyond imagining.

It makes me appreciate Zulu’s spirit all the more- how he tried so hard to overcome his fears and trust again. Dr. Rich said that his crazy stress levels were no doubt largely to blame for his early death, and I’ll miss him always.

As for Jamie? I can’t imagine there are going to be many who miss him.

Ali came home with roomie Elizabeth for LSU’s Fall Holiday, which ran from Wednesday afternoon through the weekend. All of which would’ve been much more fun if they weren’t both totally sick- Ali with a sinus infection/cold, Elizabeth with allergies/cold and needing a little TLC.

Which, in this case, consisted of a combination of being taken out to eat, home cooked meals, and sleep. Upon their arrival, she used what little voice she had to croak out a pitiful plea for Craig and Kimmie’s food. While there she took out her prescription, and I just couldn’t stop laughing:

I mean, really. Even the freaking pill bottles are in the school colors? I’ll have to check with my cousin Carolyn- a foamingly rabid UGA alum who was not exactly thrilled at Alison’s school choice- to see if this sort of detailed brainwashing is SOP for these southern schools.

At any rate, several requests were made for food to be brought back to LSU- Charlie’s special chicken, a tray of fancy-schmancy mac n’ cheese and chocolate chip cookies.

The ‘homemade’ part was stressed. Repeatedly. So how do you resist that one? You don’t. In the midst of preparations I discovered that Pratchett loves cheese.

Loves? Adores. Worships. To get his greedy talons on some, he will actually ‘fly’ over from his cage (poor lad. It’s more like semi-controlled falling, but he didn’t seem to care if there was the potential for some cheesy goodness to ease his rough landing).

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I have my grandmother’s hoarding/feeding/stockpiling genes. Every time I visited her while I was in school she sent me home with food, which I appreciated, but also started to wonder if she thought the only grocery store in existence was the one in her neighborhood. In the end, the girls were packed up with loads of food- cold cuts, chips, Special K bars, boxes of tissues, juice, only slightly parrot-nibbled mac n’ cheese, etc, and sent off after one last meal out, at Cafe Atchafalaya.

I do despair of ever getting a normal photo of them together. Here they are, ‘sizzling’ in Atchafalaya’s huge frying pan.

Then they were off, with a stop at The House of Shock. I was a little worried about that one- two years running Alison went with friends who were got scared just by the freakshow outside that they were sobbing and quit before they even got inside the building.

For the uninitatied, here’s the House of Shock, named by the Travel Channel as the most extreme Haunted House in the US:

(If you don’t have the patience to sit through it, skip to the 3:58 mark and you’ll know everything you need to about why I was worried.)

Needless to say, Alison loves it and can’t wait to go every year, but Elizabeth is a sweet, semi-sheltered religious sort of girl. In fact, they were leaving a day early so she could go home to practice for a play her church is putting on- you can see why I just wasn’t sure how this would go over.

I have yet to hear just how it went, but hey,they’re still coming for Voodoo Fest later this month, so it couldn’t have scared her off too much, right?

“And very tasty, might I add,” said Pratchett.

I’d read that giving a grey a chicken leg with a little meat on it is a fine thing to do- they like it, it’s a new texture, and unlike with dogs, the cooked bones won’t hurt them.

So Pratchett took it in his talon and sort of poked at it, but he looked rather conflicted. I had to wonder if he sensed he was literally picking over a distant relative’s bones.

When I extended my hand to him, Pratch dropped it right way before washing out his mouth and returning to his vegetarian ways.

You know, you try your best. You try to raise ‘em right. You love them, teach them, and send them out into the world, hoping they’ll make the right choices.

And then they break your heart.

:::sigh:::

So the other night I was in the kitchen working on dinner and flipped the radio on. I’m an NPR junkie, but Alison’d had it tuned to one of her stations. It was getting late, and I didn’t bother to fiddle with it; it was just supposed to be background noise after all.

And then, like in some terrible, mullet & silicone-filled horror movie, things…changed. Apparently after 7 the station switches over to some sort of light n’ easy format: Air Supply, Bee Gees, Bette Middler, you know the type. But I was up to my elbows in frying beef, and tuned it out. How many parents say that? “Oh, I thought it was harmless, I didn’t think anything of it…” Until Kenny Rogers came on. I groaned, but still didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Pratchett started whistling, very excited. I won’t say he was dancing, but he was running back and forth across the top of his cage. He even puffed up with his wings curled around him in a semi-aroused stance. It seemed my little boy had experienced his first rush of sexual excitement.

For damned Kenny Rogers.

God, where did I go wrong?

I grabbed the pocket Canon, hoping to document this shocking behavior and show it to him later, maybe do a little “Scared Straight” act. “This is your brain on Kenny Rogers” kind of thing. But he was so worked up he lunged at the camera, grabbing the case and pulling the protective cover off the inside of the lens. See what being hopped up on the Gambler’ll make you do?

But it was too late, the moment had passed and all that was left was the awkwardness.

It immediately made me think of the Kathy & Mo show from a decade ago & a skit called “Kenny and the Prostitute.” I searched everywhere but just couldn’t find it online anywhere. I remembered that I had the dvd and did the po’ man’s copy- set my sad and newly injured camera to tape it while it played on the computer. It’s no longer focusing correctly, thanks to Pratchett’s job, but it’s the audio that’s the important bit anyway:
(youTube Link here)

I laughed my ass off when I first saw this, because it touched such a nerve. (Particularly the look she gives at the 4:30 mark, where it’s especially clear that if she actually had to live with Kenny, one of them would have to die.)

You see, I know all too well the pain of growing up in a Kenny Rogers affected household. My mother wasn’t a big music fan- she only had a handful of cassettes, all greatest hits collections: Kenny Rogers, obviously. Anne Murray. Neil Diamond. Barry Manilow. And yes, even Helen Reddy.

Bizarrely sappy, every one- particularly strange since my mother was neither a romantic nor an idealist. In retrospect, her musical tastes were so out of character that I wonder if it wasn’t a cry for help that I was too young to understand. Honestly, my siblings and I wondered if we weren’t a product of immaculate conception, because we’d never seen anyone so seemingly disinterested in the opposite sex- although her uber-nasty divorce might’ve been the very thing that made her decide that fantasy Kenny was the only kind of guy she could be bothered with, and since his songs are about as realistic as the Tooth Fairy, the odds of his doppelganger coming along and sweeping her off her feet were slim.

But in the end I can hardly be blamed for that metalhead phase in high school, can I? And the fact that I’m lactose intolerant after all being force-fed all that cheeze can hardly be a surprise…

So now we’ve come full circle, and Kenny’s claimed a new victim. Of all the things you thought could never happen to one of your own…

I was poking around and came across a new concept in bird toys and gave it a whirl. You go to Birdy Booty to check out their samples, decide they’ve got a whole lot more time and creativity than you, and fill out the form.

You don’t choose a specific toy; you determine how much you want to spend, and tell them about your bird(s), their likes and dislikes, color preferences, the whole shebang, and wait for your box to arrive. (Pratchett’s instructions were that he’s easily annoyed- he wants to be able to break his toys up immediately, all the better to make me have to buy new toys ASAP.)

There was much rejoicing at the opening of the box:

I suspect more boxes will follow.

Oh, and they accept donations for the amazing Project Perry- if you donate a toy to them, BirdyBooty’ll match it. Click the link to see phenomenal photos of the aviary they created for rescued greys.

Through Best in Flock,I learned that Irene Pepperberg’s Alex Foundation has been tapped for a matching gift offer- any donation of $50 or more will be generously matched by Andy Sterner.

Back when I was doing research into whether or not to become a parrotperson I’d learned about Dr. Pepperberg’s amazing work with Alex, and now Griffin and Wort. After Alex’s death in 2007, I was shocked to learn (through her book Alex & Me) that despite being a world renowned researcher, she still has to scrape and beg for money.

Partially, that’s because there’s never enough money to go around, but it’s also because many scientists don’t consider her work important enough to be taken seriously, which makes me a little insane, honestly. How many millions of hours have been spent trying to understand how animals’ brains work, and here we have one that can actually communicate and because it’s in a form they’re not accoustomed to (ie, not a primate) it doesn’t count? Talk about hubris.

Anyway, end editorial. If you don’t know about Alex, check it out. I think you’ll be surprised.

Exerpt from Pepperberg’s book here.

Donate to the Foundation here.

And another great, but unembedable video here.

This falls into the good news/bad news category: Pratchett’s started talking! He’s been saying “Hello” with fair regularity, and he’s got a bunch of other words coming down the pipe. I’ve heard this stage called ‘birdie baby babble,’ which is about right- he sort of works on them when he’s alone, saying them over and over to himself, working it all out.

So, imagine my surprise when something new happened this weekend- he started yelling at the dogs…which made me realize how much Iyell at them, because now Pratch is beating me to it. We have a new dog next door, and whenever she starts yapping, Sammy and Bruiser have to join in, even though my dogs have no idea what they’re barking about. And this new dog yaps a lot.

But now, as start as they get cranked up, Pratch yells “S’mantha!”, followed by a bunch of stuff that’s not understandable yet, but will probably evolve into either “knock it off!” or “be quiet, dammit!”

So yeah, little birdies have big ears. Gonna have to start watching that. Again. It’s kind of like having a toddler all over again, and just when I’ve gotten used to the idea that Alison already knows all those words I’d rather she didn’t.

My morning missive from home:

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Subject:bird breakfast bulletin

Charles Burck to me
8:27 AM (1 hour ago)

Mix of yogurt, mango, strawberry, blueberry, and blueberry jam pretty much a hit after a cautious approach?I think he wanted to be settled securely on the crossbar first. Blueberries rejected, all else consumed w/pleasure. Lapping up the soupy yogurt-mango mix, he made those little gargling sounds he does when drinking water.