A Year with Gracie

One year ago, the most marvelous creature flew into my life ... Gracie, beautiful Maximilian's Parrot, a Pionus with an aerodynamically-designed body covered with vibrant green feathers that bring to mind one word -- resplendent! Her small head is decorated with gray feathers, the ends of which are tipped in green. Her breast is a dusty lavendar, but her real glory lies in the vermillion feathers underneath her tail. Few man-made objects look as striking as the red feathers on her bottom against the green feathers of her tail, the green feathers also tinged with the most beautiful royal blue.

As a painter, I am delighted every morning to find this happy-go-lucky sprite sharing her beauty with me so freely. She puts her head down to be petted and my awkward fingers enjoy the softest down as she coos like a tiny winged baby.

At age five, Gracie left a home with many other birds, a mom and dad and two children... the only family she had known since hatching in an incubator ... and traveled hundreds of miles in a shakey old truck to dwell with a single, middle-aged woman with dogs. She left the country to live "in town" and being a quiet parrot, my neighbors still speak to me.

Gracie's most-happy-it-must-be-my-birthday! moment occurs anytime she sits on her PVC-pipe perch in the shower and, bottom up, head down, wings spread, eyes closed she enters her "rain forest" and calls back, somehow, to the bird-parents of inherited memory. Eventually, feathers heavy with droplets, she sits straight up, shakes her head, and allows her favorite transportation system, me, to take her to her "home." There, she perches and preens the hot summer afternoon away, nibbling on vegetables and playing with the newspaper, like a health-conscious female at the local spa. She emerges at suppertime ready to sit at the kitchen window and chirp to the sparrows who congregate at the bird bath and feeder there. When they look up to the window and see this beautiful creature, five times their size, with lavendar-brown-grey eyes surrounded by pure white circles that meet the green feathers of her head ... I wonder if they think she is a goddess. Perhaps they have created birdy-lore about the "mysterious one in the window who joins our song each morning and evening."

An early bird, the sound of Peter Jennings at 6:30 is her signal that bedtime approaches. A little cooing in my ear and sitting with me on the couch, and then it's off to sleep under a brown sheet on a perch that is supposed to feel like a tree branch under her reptilian toes. A four-lb. Chihauhua sleeping closeby, ready to alert at any cat that might dare to step on the far side of our kitchen door ... Gracie sleeps in safety, peace and comfort ... one leg up, one leg down.

She will be 6 on July 4th this year. Happy Birthday, Gracie!