Trials of a Parakeet Owner

Pierrot and Tom

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

Aug 3, 1957

   IF YOU'RE willing to overlook assorted turtles and goldfish--and to discount a couple of white mice which still may be loose in the garage--I can say without fear of contradiction that the family never has lost a pet save through natural death or by design.

Dad at the Great Falls Tribune

   Our Boston terrier was with us for 14 years and full of beans until her demise.  A bunny purchased for a long-ago Easter grew into giant maturity despite dogs, cats and finally owner indifference.  The kids "sold" it to a rabbit farmer for a dollar.  The dollar had been slipped to the man by my wife.

   A horned toad bought in early summer was turned loose weeks ago because of the feeding problem. Live insects, which seem plentiful enough, come suddenly into short supply when sought as feed.  But the toad hangs around.  We see it a couple of times a week in the flower beds.  It will hole up in the rock garden come winter, no doubt, and reappear, stolid and imperturbable, next May.

   BUT LATE last Saturday afternoon the roof fell in.  Pierrot, the parakeet, than which there is none cuter or smarter, swooped through the momentarily open porch door and into the blue.

   Six months ago I'd have said that any adult who mourned the loss of a parakeet wasn't quite grown up.  If this is true I admit adolescence.  We combed the neighborgood, scanned the trees with binoculars, whistled and called, put the cage outside with the door open, hoping that hunger would draw our wanderer home.  We all were sick deep inside.  Our son cried himself to sleep.  We felt like joining him.

   "But we haven't lost a pet yet," my wife said feebly, "and I think our luck will hold."

   She was whistling in the dark.  Next morning there was nothing near the cage but sparrows and nobody we contacted had seen a  parakeet.

   AFTER a solemn Sunday, I put and ad in the paper.  The move was a ten-strike.  The ad appeared Tuesday and the phone began ringing.  It seemed that the city was swarming with blue parakeets on the loose.  We heard that one had been rescued from Lake Calhoun.  We saw one that had been taken from Lake Harriet.

   Our hopes high, we began running down the leads.  But as bird after bird proved a stranger, I finally was ready to claim anything other than a bald eagle.  Succumbing at last to the urge to fetch home a parakeet, we bought a feathered vagabond from a woman and took it home.

   But it wasn't our perky, perpetual-motion chatterbox.  Plump, stodgy and silent, it would only eat and  roost.  To my son's objection, I dubbed it Pokey, the Blue Goose, and my wife vowed that if we didn't find our bird within 24 hours she'd roam the pet shops for his double.

Ricky and Snowy

Skeeter and Elvis

   BY WEDNESDAY but one parakeet finder remained to be contacted.  After work that day, with Brad Morison, a colleague, I started out.  Brad left instructions that if his wife called the office she should be told that he would be late for dinner, being engaged in a silly parakeet safari.

   I had small hopes.  The address was miles from our home, far out of parakeet range, I figured.  When we arrived I told Brad to wait in the car, I'd be right out.

   He waited for some time, while two other people and I tried to catch a bird flying around in a large room, a bird in no mood, after four days of adventures, to have another one.  Capture required 20 minutes.

   I DROVE home in wild elation, with Brad holding Pierrot in a cardboard box and making snide remarks about chaperoning a parakeet and wondering why I was so sure the bird was really mine.  Morison is a tropical fish man.

   But my wife and child welcomed the prodigal with an ecstacy unseen in the old hut since Christmas. We were even ready to accept the Blue Goose as a permanent resident, despite Pierrot's initial hostility.

   We didn't have to do so, however.  A couple of hours later we got a phone call from the neighborhood where we'd obtained the bird.  The caller proved to be the owner.  She took Pokey away.

   Now everyone's happy.  But our son wants another parakeet as a companion for Pierrot--one we can name Pierrette, naturally.

Pippin (parrotlet)

Piedemont (parrotlet)

(P.S. Pierette has arrived)


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