Where The Wild Things Really Are

Life without pampers

We Three Kings

We were watching Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill the other day when I mentioned our family parrot, Ronald.

"You had a parrot named Ronald? How come I never knew about this?"
"I thought I had told you."
"You told me about your monkey, George, and your Kinkajou, John, but I didn't know about the parrot... Did you get him in Panama, too?"
"Yeah. He got out of the house one day in San Jose and never came back. Maybe he became part of a flock down there."

John, we were told, died as a result of some kind of pre-travel veterinary preparation. But we like to think the family watching him for us - while we drove from Panama to Alaska - fell in love with him and lied so they could keep him.

George started getting rowdy, biting us and running away onto neighbors roofs and the nearby boat harbor. He went to a private zoo in Florida where (we were told) they had a mate for him.

Ronald, probably died via hawk or cat or kid's sling-shot or starvation, but maybe he lived long enough to find other escaped/released pet parrots and partied in the skies above San Jose.

George

George had been found clinging to his mother as a baby when she fell dead from a tree.


She had been killed for meat by members of a local tribe along the Bayano River and sold, or given, to our guide on the river (this was before it was dammed in 1976, creating Lake Bayano).



He was a black spider-monkey, without opposable thumbs, loved chocolate chips, wore pampers, slept with us as kids, terrorized the parrot, released the kinkajou from its playpen, wrapped his tail around your arm like a tree-limb, and loved to play.

He loved chocolate chips so much he developed what we called his 'chocolate chuckle'. A hoo-hoo-hoo sound that expressed pure joy at eating chocolate.

Monkeys shit wherever and whenever, so the pampers helped with that around the house. We would cut a hole for his tail.

At one point in Ketchikan, Alaska, my father had built a floor to ceiling cage for George and Ronald (the parrot) to share. George would often grab at Ronald's wings, or tail-feathers, and try to swing from them, or just plain terrorize him and chuckle about it.

In Panama, when we still had John (the kinkajou), George would release John from his playpen at night. Kinkajous are nocturnal, so John would wander the house a bit before eventually curling up in bed with my parents.

George loved to play.

He would grab at you, then turn and run screaming, and when you were about to catch him, would somersault and turn to face you in defense, chuckling and screaming. Then do it all over again.


One morning I woke up with him wrapped across my face like the face-hugger from Alien. I sputtered 'George!', and he chuckled and ran off. I'm convinced he purposefully lay there waiting until I woke up, knowing how funny it was.

Don't bother mentioning anthropomorphism... That term is for people who haven't spent any time with animals other than their next-door neighbor, or in-laws.

John

Another name for kinkajou is 'honeybear'. They have long tongues, are golden-colored, have a prehensile tail, and love to tickle feet.

John was not as much of a trouble-maker as George, but still equally as fun. With his monkey-like tail he would hang from our arms as we walked around the backyard and up and down stairs.

All the time emitting his constant whine.

I don't know what his whining meant, but it was constant. He was a noisy creature, but sweet.

He'd hide under our multi-legged, fortress-like coffee-table, and us kids would poke our bare feet through the openings in the legs.

It was like the tree-stump in Flash Gordon. We could hear John's whining, but never knew whose toes he would start to nibble on with his tiny, sharp teeth.


The tension of waiting for the tickle-pain would start us all giggling, until someone would suddenly yell out and laugh louder, a victim of John.

Sadly for us, John never made it to Ketchikan. I'm sure he and the monkey would have continued to enjoy each others company. Torturing the parrot, escaping their cage in the night, and wandering the house getting into whatever they could.

George once got into flour and honey at the same time.

We heard his chuckling and came into the kitchen to find George had climbed a shelf and knocked over a honeycomb and some flour, covering himself in both. He seemed pretty happy about it.

I like to think that John would have been right there alongside George, draped in honey, if he could have been.

Ronald

A blue-headed parrot who loved bananas.

I've forgotten how we acquired Ronald. He was a very loving bird, but a bit noisy.

He wasn't as much fun to play with as the monkey or the kinkajou was, so Ronald often got left in his cage to watch as others had fun. Kind of a bummer deal.

But Ronald did get to spend time wandering the house occasionally. Perched on a shoulder while we watched TV, climbing the curtains, or walking around on the floor.

He pooped wherever, and whenever. This made keeping him on your shoulder (or even head) a time-sensitive issue.

Let's see, I saw Ronald poop recently, so I'm probably good to have him on my head for a bit... Nope, I was wrong.

The head thing was funny. There wasn't much to grab, and he would slip about on your hair scratching your scalp, until he finally decided he'd had enough.


But he loved attention and being around us.

You could scratch his head, or chest, and he would cuddle up closer, or make strange 'I'm happy' noises.

Blue-headed parrots aren't very large, so he couldn't really hurt you with his beak if he bit. He would lightly nibble your fingers with his beak sometimes. I don't know what he was doing, but it seemed playful.

Watching Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill made me miss Ronald, and I realized he got a bit of a bum deal compared to George and John. Often left in his cage to watch the activity around him just out of reach.


Hopefully he got a little fly time around the skies of California before he died. Maybe he even found some other ex-pet parrots to hang with, learn from, raise a family with, get a good job, Friday nights at the roller rink, weekends in the Sierras...

Ok. That's anthropomorphizing.