Hopkinton Haven Offers Parrots a Perch

08-31-2007, 05:27 PM

August 27, 2007

HOPKINTON — Marc Johnson arrived from his latest pickup run carrying two small portable kennels.

“Hello,” came a voice from one of the carriers. Humphrey, a medium sulphur-crested cockatoo, peeked through its openings.

Seemingly friendly, Humphrey would, within hours, attempt to escape, flying across a 6,000-square-foot hangar as his new neighbors screeched in the background as if cheering him on.

In the other carrier stood Harry, a Moluccan cockatoo, a bit more reserved but equally attentive. Humphrey and Harry had lived together for 19 years, until their owner had to give them away on her doctor’s orders. The Massachusetts woman surrendered the birds to the care of the New England Exotic Wildlife Sanctuary, a “retirement home” for exotic animals — primarily parrots, but also primates and other unusual former pets; sorry, no tigers, lions or the like. The sanctuary opened this summer at the former Chickadee Farms, a Hopkinton poultry business that once produced some 33 million eggs a year in henhouses the size of football fields. It shut down in the early 1990s; most recently, the building had been used as an indoor rifle range.

Parrot rescue operations have sprouted up throughout the country as a byproduct of the growing popularity of pet parrot ownership.

Estimates of parrots kept in captivity — which include pets and other parrots kept by breeders, zoos and other organizations — have doubled in the past decade, to some 40 million to 60 million today in the United States alone.

Parrots present a double challenge to pet owners because of their longevity and behavioral problems. They can live more than 100 years with proper care and nutrition. In addition, experts say, they often develop behavioral and health problems because their emotional or physical needs are not met.

THE HOPKINTON SANCTUARY is the latest venture of Foster Parrots, a nonprofit group that Johnson founded in 1999 in his home in Rockland, Mass. A potter by trade, Johnson had started the rescue mission a few years earlier, housing as many as 30 parrots in his three-bedroom apartment.

Foster Parrots leases the new space from Roy Dubs, best known as cofounder of Ocean State Job Lot. Dubs, who lives in Hopkinton and has become involved with a number of local charities, also owns several exotic animals. His exotics, including a handful of parrots and turtles now housed at the opposite end of the building, will be integrated into the sanctuary.

Under the terms of the lease, Foster Parrots pays a nominal $1 a year to Dubs and retains an option to buy the 15-acre site on Woodville-Alton Road, across from the Wood River Golf Course, for a fee that has yet to be determined.

The golf course’s holes 13 to 17 abut the sanctuary’s land.

In the past, Dubs said, some of his giant tortoises took advantage of the lack of a fence to stroll around the golf course. Golfers helped to apprehend the roaming turtles, Dubs said.

Dubs extended a similar nominal-lease proposal for nearby Turning Pointe, a therapeutic riding center that is now acquiring land from him.

ALONG WITH DUBS’ animals, the 200-plus parrots currently housed in Johnson’s three-level house and barn in Rockland will be transferred to Hopkinton as space becomes available, Johnson said. Volunteers have already started to renovate the remaining 10,000 square feet of the former henhouse, which will include office and conference space as well as larger enclosures for macaws and cockatoos.

Outdoor aviaries will be also built, attached to the indoor enclosures and, as money becomes available, more aviaries could be built into the adjacent woods, said Johnson, who codirects the nonprofit organization with his fiancÉe, Karen Windsor. Foster Parrots will maintain its headquarters in Massachusetts, Johnson said. The group, he said, draws most of its approximately $200,000 annual operating budget from grants.

In Hopkinton, the parrots will share the space with other exotics, including several African Sulcata tortoises, which can grow up to 2½ feet long and weigh 110 pounds or more; a Patagonian cavy, an Argentinean rodent that resembles a hare; and several primates, being held temporarily in Florida while their Rhode Island permits are being processed. The primates were taken to Florida from the Catskill Game Farm, a private zoo in New York that closed last year.

Still, “this will not even come close to putting a dent to solve the problem as a whole,” said Paul Brennan, a Foster Parrots staff member.

Right now, Johnson said, Foster Parrots fields 20 to 30 calls a week on average from people looking to surrender their birds. And that’s just from Greater Boston, he said.

Overwhelmed with demand in its Rockland quarters, Foster Parrots had to start turning people away — referring them to other area rescue groups such as the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or the Animal Rescue League of Boston.

“There is nothing else we can do,” Brennan said. “We’ve reached our ceiling.”

Parrots that suffer from serious health problems or show severe behavioral problems and are deemed unadoptable are euthanized, although that’s a last resort, representatives of those groups said.

THE HOPKINTON SANCTUARY charges owners surrendering their pets $2 a day for the average expected life of the parrot, up to $50,000 for lifetime care service.

In its first month offering the service, five people surrendered their birds to the sanctuary, including Harry and Humphrey’s owner, who also sponsored another Moluccan, Oliver.

Coincidentally, Oliver — who had arrived at the sanctuary just a day earlier and who had never met Humphrey, Harry or their owner — was the first to greet Harry in his new home.

Under Johnson and Brennan’s watch, Oliver made his way to Harry, gently pecking him and exposing his neck, the most vulnerable part of his body.

Harry did likewise.

He was officially a member of the group.

For Humphrey, however, the move to his new home will be gradual.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos tend to be more territorial, Johnson explained. To ease the transition, Johnson temporarily placed Humphrey in an individual cage next to the sulphur-cresteds’ enclosure. In time, the cage will be rolled into the enclosure. If all goes well, he will be released into the enclosure. How long that takes will depend on the sulphur-cresteds, Johnson said.

On his first day at the sanctuary, Humphrey seemed to be adjusting well to the change. He moved around, watching everyone and offering a few “hellos” in an attempt to attract attention to himself.

When he succeeded, he positioned himself by the cage’s door, as if asking to be let out. Given his first escape attempt, however, he would have to stay in and be petted through the bars.

HUMPHREY AND HARRY are an exception in the world of pet parrot ownership, Brennan said.

On average, Brennan said, parrots live up to five years with the original buyer and then bounce from home to home “once every year thereafter, which only compounds the behavior problems.

“By the time they get to the fifth home, they are … a neurotic mess,” he said.

In some cases, the psychological damage is such that parrots pluck their own feathers or mutilate themselves.

One such bird was Rosie, a sulphur-crested cockatoo surrendered to Foster Parrots after her original owners’ home burned down and her temporary guardian was unable to find her a new home. When she arrived at Foster Parrots, half of her lower body was exposed as a result of her plucking and she had a large self-inflicted wound. Under Johnson’s care, her feathers started to grow back and her wound to heal.

Another of those “special birds” whose stories are told on Foster Parrots’ Web site is Sydney Rose, a rose-breasted cockatoo who suffered severe emotional trauma, fearing light and humans, after being kept in a dark closet by the previous owners to control his behavior. He is recovering in a foster home.

Johnson and Brennan blame the pet industry for much of the birds’ difficulties, saying the industry “dumbs down” the potential problems. At best, Brennan said, it warns buyers that the birds can be “noisy and messy, and maybe a little nippy.”

“What they don’t tell you is that the noise will get you evicted from your apartment; they’ll destroy your apartment; and the nippy means they’ll rip your finger,” Brennan said.

“They have a can opener in their beaks,” Johnson said, noting he’s wound up at the emergency room three times already due to parrot-inflicted wounds.

Parrots, Johnson said, “are wild animals, and that’s the disconnect that exists.”

City Parrots