Enslaved by Ducks by Bob Tarte Read Free Book Online Page B

socialized to humans, the unfortunate bird had been stolen from her nest before the import ban on birds had taken effect. Having barely survived our encounter with a hand-raised bird, we eagerly took home the unexcitable wild-caught parakeet.
    She bit me not a whit when I took her from her cage. She suffered being placed on my shoulder without aggression or complaint. Likewise, she exhibited no joy. I walked with her to the couch and sat. Ollie would have squealed into my ear when I spoke to him. The grey-cheek clambered down my shirt, descended the front of the couch, and toddled across the carpet. She climbed the aquarium pump tubing, briefly explored the top of the fish tank, located the electrical cord to the heater, and followed it back down to the floor. She was searching, I imagined, for her lush, lost birthplace in the branches of a rainforest. I put the quiet bird back in her cage.
    “She’s got a nice disposition,” Linda pointed out.
    “Especially compared to Ollie,” I seconded.
    “She’ll get used to us.”
    “She’ll be a very nice bird.”
    The following morning I blubbered into my slice of toast, “I miss Ollie,” and soon had Linda weeping along with me at the loss of our ill-tempered pocket parrot. Like kidnap victims who had fallen under the spell of their captor, we were crushed at his absence. After only three days of Ollie’s abuse, the house seemed empty and lifeless without his maniacal chirping.
    Swallowing my pride, I made yet another visit to Jonah’s Ark while Linda was still at work and asked Violet for the return of our tormentor. I had expected her to angrily refuse my request, but the bother of the exchange was nothing compared to the bother of hanging on to Ollie, and she agreed with ill-disguised satisfaction. We learned much later that we had been the second people to buy and return Ollie within a two-week period, but the only ones foolish enough to retrieve him.
    “We need to give lessons to you people when you buy a bird,” she told me, shooting a knowing look at a seasoned parrot-owner friend of hers. Without the slightest fear of injury, she whisked Ollie from his cage, turning him upside down so that his back rested in the palm of her left hand while his feet still clung to the two fingers of her right hand. Making a walking motion with those two fingers, she moved his feet back and forth while singing a chorus of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Ollie clucked in appreciation. Force of personality was obviously the key to dealing with him. I had no force of personality, but I did have Ollie back.
    Hardly a day goes by that we haven’t regretted his return.
    We learned to handle him with greater ease, understanding that the more hesitant we acted, the more inclined he was to bite. That doesn’t mean his temperament improved. From the moment the cover is removed from his cage in the morning to early evening when he’s put to bed, Ollie clamors for attention. His behavior contradicts the expert opinion of Robbie Harris, author of
Grey-cheeked Parakeets and Other Brotogeris
, the only guide to the brotogeris family I’ve discovered so far. “Their chattering voices can be loud at times,” the author understates, “but a bird kept singly as a pet is seldom noisy.” I’m not sure how Harris might define “noisy,” but on a summer day when the dining room windows are open, we’ve heard Ollie’s chirps as far away as the riverbank some five hundred feetfrom the house—down the hill, across the swamp, and through thickets of trees and brush, as cars and trucks clattered past the house. Late mornings, just before leaving for a housecleaning job, Linda usually eats her lunch in the car rather than sitting in the kitchen and suffering through Ollie’s shrill demands for a morsel of food.
    Throwing a towel over Ollie’s cage calms but does not quiet him, eliciting a toned-down chatter that has the semblance of an apology. Even when he seems genuinely happy, as when