I sing with a couple of vocal music groups, and often feel remarkably better when I leave than when I arrive at either a practice or performance. I never really thought about it very much, just enjoyed the fact. If anything, I've attributed it to the group itself, or the director. Even when the choice of music isn't my favorite, I find I'm friendlier with the individuals involved after we sing. Apparently there's a reason for this.
Bjorn Vickhoff, a musicologist in Sweden conducted a study wherein the individual heart rates of a choir of 18 young people were measured as they sang. Within a very short time, breathing in at the same time, and singing the notes together, their heart rates synchronized.
I think he was studying their singing simple hymns, and wonder what the results would be if they sang complex rhythms or polyphony. At any rate, I think it's fascinating.
Halle's feet get stuck in my hair, thus the hat.
Good God, I could be Greta Thunberg's aunt!
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I can't say I was terribly clever or original when coming up with Halle's name. Cat Woman was a popular film right about then, and I liked Halle Berry. Also, I was working on singing Handel's Messiah, and the Hallelujah Chorus was playing at my house night and day. It's a nice, loud song, and Halle really liked to scream along to it. She's got more notes in her repertoire than say, Scooby, but not many. Halle's voice is not musical, but she can say a few words. 'Macaw pretty bird!' is a much loved phrase, as is 'Hello!' You'd be amazed at how many inflections the word Hello can have, how many meanings it can convey. While with Vito, Halle would stand on top of her cage and lean with her whole body toward him on the other side of the room, and Vito would say, 'Come on!' trying to encourage her to fly over to him. He'd say it loudly and with feeling, but she never felt comfortable flying that distance. Could be the limited number of wing feathers. This went on for the whole month or two that she lived there, and what she took from the experience was the ability to say, 'Come on!' Sadly, she's stopped adding much to her vocabulary, something that tends to happen to some birds after a certain age. I tried to get her to say,'I can talk; can you fly?' What she responds is,'Caw, caw, caw.' And that's it.
When she moved in, she and I had a difference of opinion about where droppings should go. She'd sit on my shoulder, and after awhile, I'd feel a warm spot on the back of my shirt. The couch was a favorite spot to perch, unfortunately. Also, if she were scared, she'd unload wherever she was. I was not amused. So whenever she'd go in the right place, on the newspaper surrounding her cage or in the cage itself, I'd say, 'You're a good bird!' She took notice, and within two months she was paper trained. Even better, when I'd give her her nightly treat of a few pistachios, she'd tell me that I was a good bird. The phrase is clearly a reward for good behavior. I make sure I always have a good supply of pistachios, unsalted of course.
As I've said, this bird was half bald. This left very little to the imagination. When Vito brought her home, he called her Pete. A Hahn's Macaw, she's non-sexually dimorphic. That just means you can't tell which sex the bird is by looking at it. So Pete it was. The other birds at Vito's were named Scooby (a sun conure), and Joe (an Amazon of some sort). Scooby was friendly but really not very bright; he had a song that consisted of a couple of notes, and that was it. Joe was an older bird, adopted after his person, a woman passed away. Joe was inclined to bite pretty much anyone, even after having been there for a few years. They all lived in the living room, and Pete's cage, now scoured clean but still enormous, made the room quite crowded. Though Scooby really wanted a friend, Pete really wanted someone to attack, and Joe, well forget about Joe. So they all had to be kept separated. But that didn't stop Pete (you know, Halle) from being the ringleader. The shreikfests were legendary. This made Vito's wife very unhappy.
Vito was kind of the go-to guy when it came to birds in the Mid-Cape area, having taught the younger, more official bird rescue fellow there everything he knew. So when there was a drug bust in the area, and two birds were part of the seized property, our official fellow got the fully feathered cockatoo, and Vito got Pete. Naturally, Pete did not come with full medical records or even an adequate set of bird toys. This may explain the feather picking. Parrots are smart birds, Scooby being an exception. So they need things to do, things to shred and destroy, things to keep their minds occupied. Pete had none of that, and was raised by drug dealers. Thus the plucking. Feathers are toys when you've got nothing else. And pulling out feathers is an act of defiance, anxiety, or distress. It's possible Pete was addicted to whatever was being sold at the drug house as well. More about that later.
Spending time at Vito's, still doing some child care, I got to know and love Pete. While sitting on my shoulder the bird would groom me and try to eat what I ate directly from my mouth. When Vito saw this, and his wife complained bitterly about the noise level, things began to shift. Vito loved Pete, too, but the writing was on the wall. When I allowed as how I would be willing to adopt, it was no time at all before Pete became Halle Macaw and moved to my house. At this point my friends quipped that Halle was a transgender bird.
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I was doing child care for a rather hyperactive young boy when we heard a truck pull up in the driveway. Then we heard a loud squawking, and my charge perked up with excitement. He wondered aloud what this could possibly be. In a few moments, his dad, Vito came in, trundling an enormous cage on a dolly. The cage's occupant was the owner of the squawking voice, and used it freely. The cage itself was covered in droppings, feathers, seeds and spiderwebs. Yes, spiderwebs. It was disgusting. Vito located another, smaller but clean cage in his basement-of-all-amazing-things, and proceeded to reach into the big cage to transfer the bird to the small one. Immediately, the little parrot chomped the meaty part of his hand, drawing plenty of blood. Vito wisely withdrew the offending hand and went to deal with the blood. I stood by his very excited son and the understandably agitated bird. The boy waved his arms and had plenty to say. It was unfortunate that he was also wearing a bright orange sweatshirt. I tried to get him to back away from the cage and relax. Eventually, the two calmed down enough that I was able to reach in with both hands, cup the bird in them gently and move her to the littler cage. I looked at her, fierce, vulnerable, and half bald. It was love at first sight.
