Misty Bird

When most people look at Misty Bird, they think they are looking at a Cockatiel, but that's just a disguise. He wears the feathers of a male Cockatiel to throw people off his real mission which is Supervisor Extraordinaire.

Misty Bird lives in a cage that rests on a table in the corner of the living room, aka The Bird room. He has a view of the whole room including a good portion of the wide entrance hall into the room as well as the activity thru the glass window on the wall next to his cage.

Misty came into my care about five years ago. It was a life changing experience for both of us. I had just lost my house in hurricane Rita, and had resettled in an apartment in Houston, TX. Misty had been passed from one foster family to another and was showing signs of neglect. Thru the good offices of friends (doing good deeds) we were brought together for good or ill. It's still undecided but as things presently stand the 'good' is more heavily weighted than the ill.

In the early days of our relationship, I read books about the care and feeding of Cockatiels, spent a lot of money on toys, vitamins and tasty seeds, and regular visits to authentic bird groomers. I also spent many hours holding him on my finger and talking to him to no avail. He preferred jumping off my finger to the floor and hiding under chairs and tables. Neither did he show an inclination to imitate human speech, but exercised an incredible range of whistles and screeches. He also refused to eat the nourishing diet the authentic bird groomers recommended. He ate only black sunflower seeds, which the authentic bird groomers called potato chips of the seed diet.

Suffice it to say we gradually settled into a routine that suited both of us. I let him stay in the cage as I stood next to him and repeated the phrase, “I love you” over and over hoping he would learn to say it. Limiting his sunflower seeds forced him to eat other seeds. On his part, the screeching stopped and he looked at me in a interested way, cocking his head this way and that.

Then one day I was given a kitten, which, in time. grew into a cat. Misty whistled each time the cat entered The Bird Room, then ignored her. If the cat began some activity I had prohibited at one time or another, alarm whistles rang out.

Surprise is hardly the word to use when one day, I heard Misty whispering the words, “I love you”!

Presently he is talking some kind of gibberish in a louder tone, but I don't know if he is imitating an over heard conversation, or a TV commercial. From now on, I'll switch the TV off and only play music.

The question is: what music to play, a classic instrumental, a jingle, The Star Spangled Banner, or a Woody Guthrie?


Cockatiel