Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Foster Parrots photo

The headline on the projo news blog yesterday read, RI parrot rescuers honored by Mass. animal cruelty-prevention society

HOPKINTON, R.I. -- Marc Johnson and Karen Windsor, co-directors of Foster Parrots, a rescue, adoption and sanctuary service, have been awarded this year's "Human Hero of the Year Award" from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals...

This caught my eye because my brother was recently in a tropical spot, and when he asked what I wanted him to bring back, I half-jokingly said, "A parrot."

He didn't. He brought me a T-shirt with a colorful parrot screened on the back instead. But now I seemed to have found a parrot adoption program a few dozen miles away.

Foster Parrots is a serious place. After reading their Adoption Guide, I feel sheepish about my casual notion of chatting with a beautiful bird. I fail on nearly every criterion:

I usually like things quiet.

I don't have a lot of room for a parrot to fly around, or a spare bird room.

I don't have a lot of time to socialize with a parrot.

I have non-stick cookware in the house. (It can be toxic to birds.)

Did I mention we have two cats?

No, this is not the nest such a bird is longing for.

I'm guilty of imagining life with a lovely animatronic parrot, part talking pet, part art object, not a noisy, aggressive, needy, wild companion bird. Ouch.

The newsblog item continued,

"I would like to give a very special thank you to MSPCA for addressing the homeless-parrot issue," said Johnson, who in 1989 founded the nonprofit organization in his Rockland, Mass., home. "They are truly leaders in the animal-welfare world, for this award marks the first time that anyone involved in the unwanted-parrot issue has been publicly recognized by a major animal welfare organization."

"Parrots have become America's third most popular pet," said Windsor, the organization's executive director. "Unlike dogs and cats which have been domesticated over thousands of years, parrots are still very much wild animals. Many store-bought parrots are just a generation or two removed from their wild-caught relatives. And it is their wild nature that often makes them incompatible as household companions."

If you've had similar pretty-bird fantasies, you might want to listen first to WRNI's 7-minute story about Foster Parrots, by Flo Jonic from last March. The story says Foster Parrots no longer lets its parrots be adopted. Too many died.