One of my lasting memories of childhood is my mother freaking out around birds.  Any birds, big or small, caused her to melt into a stuttering, jittery mess if they got within arms length of her.  Her condition resulted from a childhood run-in she had with a rabid chicken on some family member’s farm (I think that’s the story) and she’d never been able stand them after that.

When I was in college I was living in an apartment with a couple of guys, including my longtime roommate Fig (cool story: Fig moved to Winston-Salem two years before I did and we now see him and his family more than we ever used to in DC).  He worked at a pet store and then at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter and would often bring home the animals that were considered hopelessly ill and try to nurse them back to health.  One of those animals was a large, white thing that I think was a cockatoo. Whatever it was it had a condition that caused it to lose its feathers over time, resulting in a constantly decaying state of plumage and an attitude more surly than a 13 year old girl deprived of a cell phone (I know where of I speak).  It lived on a pedestal placed on our only table which was located at the central most point in our apartment. That meant you couldn’t go anywhere in the apartment without the thing hissing or trying to fling poop at you.  Thankfully it couldn’t go anywhere due to its bald state and you were safe if you stayed about a foot outside the perimeter of the table.

Needless to say once the bird from hell moved in Mom stopped visiting, but not until she’d stopped by before I could warn her about our new roommate.  She walked in, was hissed at, let out a kind of cry/whelp, blanched whiter than our bald bird, turned around and didn’t come back until it moved out. Note: "moved out" is a euphemism for "croaked".

All this is a long preface to the true topic of this post which is the amazing change Mom made a couple of years ago when she met her leading man, the estimable Dr. Bert Dickas, retired professor of geology and avid bird watcher.  In the years since they met she’s joined him on numerous birding expeditions and can now tell a pigeon from an emu.  She’s gone so far as to fly to a Caribbean destination with the express purpose of tromping through the jungle looking for exotic birds rather than basking on a beach.  Even more impressive is that he’s talked her into driving to destinations not on either of the coasts, heretofore known as "the other America", to watch migrating birds.  Never underestimate the power of love.

I thought of this after reading about the website of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. I’m sure Bert will find it interesting and maybe Mom might even take a look at it.  Me?  I’m going to see if they have anything on surly, balding cockatoos.