Why we gave up our parrot after seven years

This is an extremely hard story to write. I grew up around parrots, waking to the call of macaws, chatting back and forth with the Amazons all afternoon, reading Bird Talk magazine in my room with a green-cheeked conure on one shoulder and a sun conure on the other.

My mother, who adopted so many problem parrots during my teens, knows all too well how difficult it is for them to find long-term homes, and I absorbed that knowledge from her. I was painfully aware of the phenomenon of ignorant first-time parrot-owners who realize they've gotten in over their heads. I never expected to be that sort of person.

And I wasn't, really. It was more complicated than that.

Rain Man, our blue-fronted Amazon parrot, was my mom's worst-behaved foundling before John and I got together. He had been found on the street in the rain, and he avoided people whenever possible, biting if they got too friendly with him. John was the first human he didn't hate, and after they met, he became our parrot.

In the seven years we had him, constant and diligent kindness brought him out of his shell. He became a parrot who would step up, who could even be carefully stroked on the neck if he was in the right mood. He never became cuddly, but he began to be capable of affection.

And then a few things happened, which combined to change our life with him.

One: we finally made human friends in our area. After years of trying to make contact with other local nerds, we managed at last to establish a group to hang out with. For once in our lives, John and Rain Man and I weren't living in an isolated bubble. There were guests at our home, and trips to visit friends.

Two: we started being invited to more speeches outside our home town. Within the first two months of spring this year, we spoke once for a college in Duluth and once for a conference in Iowa. We were away from home for days at a time, more often than ever before.

Three: the change in Rain Man himself. Not only had he grown to accept our attention, he had grown to crave it. He screamed endlessly if we weren't with him every moment. He bit us if we came home from a long outing. John's hands were covered with open wounds all the time, making it hard for him to handle chemicals at work. Once during a party at our apartment, the bird even flew across the room to attack John's face.

And we realized that our life didn't fit Rain Man anymore. We no longer had enough time and energy to give him the endless attention he needed. Other people and other projects had filled our world, and Rain Man could not accept that there was no longer a huge chunk of it left for him.We were no longer people who had enough time to keep such a needy creature happy. Our full-time jobs plus friends plus speeches plus Rain Man added up to more than we could give.

And we made a choice. It was a hard choice, one that not all parrot lovers would agree with. We chose our blossoming connections with other human beings over our failing connection with Rain Man.

Through parrotforums.org, we got to know a parrot lover in Wisconsin. Like us, she had Asperger's Syndrome-- but unlike us, had little desire for a social life, and had physical disabilities that kept her at home most of the time. Her parrots were her life. She was one of the few people in this world whose living situations are actually suited to having a bird.

She'd grown up with parrots; her mother raised them for a living, and she helped out with the business, even though she was personally more interested in rescuing parrots than breeding them. She had run a parrot rescue organization for a while, and her current pet birds were rescued. One had recently passed away, and she was looking for another. She'd made a post asking if anyone had a parrot they needed to give up, and she specifically stated she was willing to take in a problem parrot.

So, after several conversations with her, we packed up Rain Man's cage and toys. We took him to the vet for one last check-up. And then we took our bird on a trip to Wisconsin, and gave him a new home.

We hope we did the right thing. It has been a lot to get used to, for us as well as him. John has woken up in the night a few times, missing the bird. I still sometimes say "Goodbye, Rain Man!" when leaving home, out of force of habit.

Soon we are planning to go on another trip to Wisconsin and visit him, to make sure he's still doing okay. I think both we and the bird will come out of this better off, but it has been a very, very hard choice.

I don't think our years with Rain Man were meaningless or a failure. We made immense progress with him. He is a better and happier bird than he was, and we are more patient and wiser people. But it is time for both us and him to move on.

We may have another pet some day, but we're going to give ourselves time to figure out just what we can handle. We don't want to get ourselves into something we're not ready for. It can happen to anyone... even people who know better.