Building For The Birds: Our Home With Josie The Yellow-Naped Amazon Was a Colorful One

My husband had an unusual request: Did we want a parrot?

It was 1988. Seems a patient needed surgery and could not afford her deductible but could give us a yellow-naped Amazon parrot in barter. They were worth a lot of money, even then. The poor woman had few resources, and this bird needed a home.

I had a 4- and a 7-year-old, plus one dog, was trying to help my husband in his new medical practice and maintain some semblance of an editorial career. Of course, they fell in love with the bird — I did, too, though I soon learned that birds are at least as much work as dogs, maybe more. They spew food (and sometimes, poop) from their cages, fluff feathers and dander all over, and can be talkative, the latter of which our loquacious family didn’t mind at all. (See if you can get a word in, I dare you!)

They shred stuff for fun. Birds have fast metabolisms, eat constantly, and thus poop constantly. Cages must be cleaned daily or else poop accumulates. I actually read a lot of news cleaning those cages. In fact, I found one of the best interest rates ever to refinance and build a tennis court right under the green poop!

A Gender Identity Crisis in Our Household

In a few years, we moved to a home with a larger yard and ended up with four dogs. 

We built a new laundry room just for Josie.

About her gender: the parrot came to us as Jose the parrot, a male. But my husband, an OBGYN, always felt she was a female. Thus we had a gender identity crisis in our household long before the pronoun cultural battle. Was Jose a boy or a girl, and how would we ever find out?

She lived in her outside cage during the day in nice weather and came inside come night and winter. We set up a nice sunny spot in the new laundry room, which contained the dander and feathers. One of Josie’s favorite in-cage activities was to “make soup” in her water with her bird pellets or bread crusts.

One of the first phrases she learned was “I could have danced all night.” I went to Porgy and Bess the night she came to us, and I may have been playing Rogers and Hammerstein musicals after that, but mine was the first voice she mimicked. Next was “I’m gonna cry ah ha ah ha!” from perching near our kids bickering on their outdoor swings. She also did a mean imitation of a fire engine as our Melissa Lane house, her first home with us, was very close to the Midway Road fire station on Northaven.

She lived with us for 10-plus years on Park Lane, entertained at many high school and adult parties, was fed Lord knows what, watched tennis games, got lost in a tree once when we were out of town, bit several people, gave my husband achilles tendinitis when she bit the back of his calf repeatedly while he was kneeling in a closet (and laughed about it), and lunged at my son every time he walked by her cage.

My daughter, a consummate animal lover, now tells me yeah, she once almost ripped my fingernail off.

I could handle her, somewhat, though she did bite me, mostly gentle nips. She also loved our first housekeeper, who was from El Salvador, and adored Josie. I took her to obedience school at SummerTree Animal Clinic. She had to go into time-out almost every session. She almost bit a McCaw who swiped her with her tail ‘till she eyed its beak and thought, “Um, better not — that beak is way bigger than mine.” By the way, the beak of a McCaw can close with a force of 500 pounds per square inch. We both stayed away.

Josie’s Reality TV Debut

Josie mellowed with age and love. Back in 2016 I had not planned my hat for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the Dallas Arboretum. At the last minute, I grabbed the largest sun hat I could find and Josie. Off we went (I had a small car carrier for her). I placed her on my hat as I went inside. Turns out, Josie caught the eye of the stars of Real Housewives of Dallas, as the show was filming at the luncheon. She was so well behaved, didn’t even poop on my hat: Gina Ginsburg loved her so much I thought briefly that our Josie had found a new lovey.

Parrots are said to have the brains and intelligence of a three-year-old child. Research has shown them to be brighter than Apes.

”Independently, parrots have evolved an enlarged area that connects the cortex and the cerebellum, similar to primates. This is another fascinating example of convergence between parrots and primates. It starts with sophisticated behaviours, like tool use and self-awareness, and can also be seen in the brain. The more we look at the brains, the more similarities we see.” 

I saw evidence almost every day. Josie was a regular Houdini and would escape her cage if not bolted in. She ate woodwork and furniture once on the run. A few times the dogs cornered her in a room with no bloodshed, and I just calmly picked her up and put her in her caja, as we called it, then went to see what she had eaten or pooped on.

A home consists of the people, pets, and inanimate objects, the integration of all weaving the fabric of lives. It’s a crazy, individualistic environment that spawns drama and etches memories.

Josie enjoyed all our homes, even the rent house that we were almost evicted from when we built our current home. I thought perhaps she loved her Park Lane laundry room the best with its sunny exposure, but in our newly built home, we had room for her in the kitchen/family area to be more inclusive, plus a huge shaded porch for her summer comfort. Eventually, we screened the porch to protect her from West Nile. I found her a beautiful indoor cage at Rutherfords on Lover’s Lane and replaced the outdoor cages about every 5 to 7 years as the metal rusted due to the elements. 

I had recently thought about building her an aviary.

A Beautiful Bird, a Foul Mouth

But in our new (20 years ago) home, she became almost too close to our family and activities. One day, as I paid a painter, he reported to me that our bird had a foul mouth.

How so? I asked.

“Well, she was using the ‘F’ word,” he said, and he had heard her repeat it all while painting the exterior porch and ceiling.

(Josie loved human company — she even puffed up for the landscapers and pool man.)

Oh my, I thought, (looking around) where did she learn that language? One night, as I did dishes and listened to the TV, I found out. I asked my husband what he was watching. 

The Sopranos. 

“Turn that off immediately,” I said. “Go upstairs if you have to watch it, or to your office. Never watch that in the family room again!”

“Why?”

“Because,” I said, “the bird sounds just like Tony Soprano!”

Censoring her audible messaging helped curb her bad language, and she went back to her repertoire of songs and crying. She also started mimicking my husband by calling my name when he wasn’t home, which freaked me out the first few times it happened.

We went to Japan and had to board Josie. The vet required bloodwork to guarantee she didn’t have chlamydia.

She is not sexually active, I told the vet.

Not that type of Chlamydia, they said: the bird type. They needed a blood test. 

Can you check the mystery of her sexual identity at the same time, I asked: the sexual identity of parrots is only conclusive through a blood test.

According to her bloodwork, Jose was a girl. 

We re-christened her Josie.

The years wore on, and Josie was diagnosed with Bournovirus but was asymptomatic if she really had it. She gained weight so we had to watch her diet and get her exercise — a real problem with birds in captivity. We had her flap her wings daily.

My husband would sometime take her for a bike ride on his handlebars. Or he’d just walk her around the block on his shoulder for stimulation.

After the death of our last dog in 2018, Josie was the queen of the house and she quite liked it, though we started traveling more. We never left her home alone, always had someone come in and feed her, clean her cage, and chat.

Then I got the Doodles in 2020. Once again, Josie watched puppies try and jump into her cage or bark at her. “Listen, dudes,” she hissed back, “I was here first long before you guys. Cool it.”

After 40-plus Years, a Fast Decline

I didn’t know she was getting sick. I was busy — with work, life, family, medical procedures, and the Doodles. I had installed a heater on the back porch for her comfort that ceased to work. So I kept her in when the mercury dropped below 50 a few weeks ago until I bought her a new portable heater.

On Thanksgiving, I put her out in the morning, turning on her toasty heater and filling her bowl with fresh food, the usual. She seemed happy.

At night, I went out to bring her into the house and found her down at the bottom of her cage — the sign of a very sick bird.

Docile as a rag, I picked her up, gently peeling her little claws from the cage bottom she clutched, and brought her inside. She plopped into her water bowl, and I wondered if she were trying to lay an egg — also not a good sign, something I had always been able to discourage her from doing. Then she stumbled around her cage, one little foot claw not able to hold on. She perched herself in a corner, her little head resting against a bar, and I made a little nest on the floor of the cage, just in case.

She was no better in the morning, she had not eaten nor pooped. I called the vet first thing and got an appointment.

Tests were inconclusive as to what, but the Vet confirmed she was a very sick bird. 

“You know about the bottom of the cage,” she said. 

There are few vets who care for birds, and fewer in the emergency animal hospitals. This vet knew Amazons and we could clearly see the spirit had been stripped from our Josie. Though some Amazons live to be 80 or 90, Josie made it somewhere to her 40s. We couldn’t target what was wrong with her, but I couldn’t bear to have her suffer a few days longer.

I felt guilty for not noticing how sick she had gotten. The vet reminded me that parrots are birds of prey and they hide sickness superbly because, if they appear weak, they will be devoured in the wild. Many humans do this as well. Josie buried it: I didn’t even notice she had not been ringing her bell as of late. But she had been chatting as of a few days ago. She certainly knew how to call us if she were frightened.

One time I was puttering in the kitchen, Josie was on the porch, and she let out a blood-curdling scream. I yelled for my husband and we ran outside, prepared to see some critter killing our bird in her cage,

There was no critter. But there was a red-tailed hawk swooping our yard. Josie had spotted him from her cage, she was terrified and called us. I brought her inside for the afternoon.

A Different, Quieter House

She has been with us through all but one home in our marriage, through love, joy, and tragedy, met our now-deceased parents and friends and helped teach my grandchildren not to ever stick your finger in a parrot cage. She has been with us almost as long as we have been married.

Our home will be very different without Josie. I never dreamed I would parent a yellow-naped Amazon, but she came our way and became part of our family, part of the lore, part of each and every home we have lived in. 

Parrots are not like dogs, they don’t follow you, and you generally cannot cuddle them and trust them. At obedience class we learned I could be holding her in my lap, stroking her, something could startle her and she’d bite — because, unlike dogs, parrots have not been domesticated for generations. But they grace a room unlike any other pet: they are colorful, beautiful, and quietly always there with a “hello.”

Here is hoping Josie is flying with parrot angels, reunited with all our loved ones, swinging and ringing her little bell in the bright Honduran sun where she was born. Now I wish I had bred her: the population of the yellow-naped Amazon parrot in Central America has decreased by more than 50 percent as a result of deforestation and the illegal removal of the birds to be sold on the black market as pets. We were told Josie was born a U.S. citizen, but never knew her birthday. We just tried to give her the best possible home and life. Now we will work to stop these birds from being taken from their habitats, to replenish the beautiful population, all in loving memory of Josie. 

If you’d like to help, find out more from In Defense of Animals.