GREEN WITH A SPLASH OF YELLOW

Our house is only truly quiet at night. During the day, a steady stream of phrases such as, “Here comes the creepy crawler!” and “Popcorn!” and “Come Here!”….to name a few….and songs such as, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “Hey, Good Lookin’”, “La Bamba”….to name a few…are heard over and over and over and over….

I guess God brings you back down a notch when you inform him that you are going to have 3 kids, live in the country surrounded by woods, on a dirt road, and have a slow paced life. Instead, He says, “Um….that ain’t happenin’. (I’m sure God talks with a country accent sometimes, ok?) I decide your fate and here it is--you are going to live in a subdivision within city limits, with no trees, live a very busy life, and oh by the way, you will have an insane parrot to care for until you die because they have a lifespan of 70-80 years. Deal with it.”

Willis, so named by my grandmother, came into our lives upon her passing. He was less than a year old at the time. According to him, he is a “Pretty Bird!” and “Oh, what a good boy!”. To be specific, he is a double yellow headed amazon parrot, with a personality the size of Texas.

Willis has been a blessing in disguise, although it took us months to figure this out. We picked him up in Florida. The year was 2004. He rode in his cage, in the back of our Jeep, all the way to South Carolina. Repeatedly, he said, “hello? hello? hello?” I can only imagine what was going through his mind. Birds are very loyal, we would come to find out. I’m sure he did not understand why we had kidnapped him from my grandmother (Mema), who passed away 3 days earlier. And, I am 100% certain that we had no clue what we were all in for.

We took him to the vet the same week we brought him home. We put his entire cage in the back of our Jeep again and set off. It was a 45 mile drive. At the last turn, a dump truck ran a red light. We slammed on our brakes and Willis’s cage broke into pieces and he flew all over the place. “What in the heck are these people trying to do to me? Where is Mema?!” he must have been thinking.

Will and I reassembled the cage and ran him into the vet, all 3 of us about to die of heart attacks. We took him back to a room to wait. Then, we were told that we needed to go back to the waiting room, because they were fixing to examine him and he was going to think he was being tortured and would not forgive us for not rescuing him if we were in the room. We tentatively walked back to the waiting room and waited for what seemed like forever. Then, we were told that we would now be allowed to “rescue” our bird so that he would feel like we were his heroes. “Come again? You must be joking!” I blurted out.

But, they weren’t. They laid out one of those blankets that hospitals give newborns…white with blue and pink trim….brought him in and put him on the blanket and told us to allow him to run to us. “What kind of freaks are we dealing with here?” I thought more than once. I truly felt like I was having one of my all too common crazy dreams. Trying to hold back laughter, I kneeled down and here came this green bird, with a yellow head, running as fast as his tiny little legs would allow him to. I scooped him up, asked him what they did to him back there, and petted his little head. Ah, the bonding moment…I was his hero.

Before this incident, he would bite and scratch me to the point of drawing blood every time I would try to touch him. Again, I was his kidnapper and he wanted his Mema!

We were told that he would need to take some medication for a few weeks, for a minor respiratory infection. It was in a syringe. “Simply put it in his mouth and squirt it in”, they said. Seemed easy enough. Um….NOT! This bird was deathly afraid of this syringe looking thing coming at his mouth and would haul tail every time we tried to bring it near him. If you’ve never seen a parrot run as fast as he can, then you are missing something funny. We called the vet—“Throw a towel over him, then pick him up, and squirt it in his mouth.” she said. Ok, no problem. Again….NOT. Every time we would get near him with a towel, he would scream like a banshee, and bite the living daylights out of us.

Bonding time was over. He hated us again. He probably got down 1/8 of medicine that cost us more money than we thought we’d ever have to pay for parrot medicine.

As time went by, I spent more and more time trying to win Willis over. I would allow him to come out of his cage on his own where he would play happily, and say things like, “Open the window!”, which he learned from me repeating that to him every time I opened the blind to the window behind his cage.

But, if I came near him, he would lunge out and bite me. I worked with this bird for so many hours that my arms were covered with bruises and Will wouldn’t allow me to go out in public without a long sleeve shirt on because he was certain that people were going to think he was abusing me.

And, then one day, after telling him to “step up” which is supposed to be the most basic training command for a parrot, he actually did it! I could have cried. He sat there on my arm staring at me and I sat there staring back. “Now what?” we both thought.

As time went by, I was able to handle him more and more. And, as of today, he will lay on the couch with me, on his back, like a dog and cuddle. He will shake hands, wave, and blow kisses.. Sometimes when he sings, he lowers his head into his food dish so it will echo…his own homemade microphone.

He speaks in context a lot and the majority of people don’t believe it until they see it with their own eyes. When he sees us putting on our shoes, he starts repeating, “Be back after while. Going to Wal-Mart.” When we come home, he screams, “Hey Willis! Hey Pretty Bird!” If we stay upstairs too long and he hasn’t seen us for a while, he will yell out, “What are you doing, doing, doing? What are you doing up there?” He learned that phrase from me yelling at Will when he would disappear upstairs. We aren’t sure why he decided to add 3 “doings” but that’s him for you. He seems to enjoy saying things in 3’s, like “tickle, tickle, tickle” and “get ya, get ya , get ya.”

He loves to sing and dance. He has 3 moves—he will bob his head up and down, pace back and forth opening and shutting his wings a little, and then he has a Stevie Wonder impersonation…moving his head back and forth to the point that we think he just might throw his head out of joint. He sings “Jesus Loves Me”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider”…the one that people find the funniest is “I Believe I Can Fly”. He also makes up his own songs. One goes, “Bye bye Willis, whacha doin’, bye bye Willis, pretty bird.” He has been singing that one for a while and it still makes us laugh every time because he made up his own words and his own beat.

In fact, he pretty much makes us laugh to the point of tears every single day. He is only 4 and is so smart that it is scary. He thinks he is in charge of the dogs. He’ll say, “Bailey, come here! or Bailey, go outside!” Bailey is a miniature dachshund so sometimes we call him “weenie”. Recently, Willis has started saying, “Hey, wee wee!”

We had a black lab named Trey that passed away in February. Our middle dog is named Belle. Willis used to like to mix their names and say, “Hey Trelle, come here Trelle!”

He can sing and say so many things that I can’t list them all here. When we travel and he has to stay with the vet, they all celebrate when he comes in. One of the vet assistants recently told us that everyone in the lobby and throughout the building can hear Willis singing and talking away. She said that when things get tense, like when they have to put down an animal, and everyone is sad, they can always count on Willis to do something crazy, like sing his version of “God Bless America” which happens to be him imitating me singing it very, very badly!

Oh, and the laugh. He loves to laugh and it is genuine. It’s a mixture of my laugh and Will’s laugh. When he knows that we are laughing at him, he will say, “Oh, Willis” as if he just thinks of himself as the funniest thing in the universe. Anytime he falls or trips, he laughs. When the dogs howl at a passing ambulance, he just thinks it is the funniest thing. He will let out a hearty laugh, and then yell, “What are you doing, doing, doing?” Sometimes he just sits in his cage and laughs at his own thoughts and the laugh is contagious.

I could go on all day. I can’t end it without talking about bath time though. On that very first vet visit a few years ago, it was explained that we must give him frequent baths. “Are you people smoking it or what? This bird doesn’t want us touching him, much less bathing him!” I thought.

But, we were told that it is a must in the bird world. So, we bought a shower perch and a spray bottle and went at it. At first, he sat there and gave us the dirtiest look that you could imagine. But now…..you really have to see it. He will open his wings and turn all around, lift each foot so that water can be poured on them indivudually, but here’s the catch…you must sing and dance the whole time you are spraying him or else he will just sit there and glare at you. Once you start the singing/dancing he sings and dances back to the point of almost falling off his perch. Seeing me and Will “perform” while spraying this bird is truly a sight to behold in of itself…..very hilarious indeed.

Willis has truly been a blessing in disguise. We couldn’t imagine life without him.