In the early ’90s my girlfriend, Kathy, and I lived in Ocean Beach. We’d only been there a month when Kathy rescued a 1-week-old injured Amazon parrot. He was lying helpless in the street, she scooped him up, saving him from a speeding car and a cat that was eyeballing him for an afternoon snack.
I had no idea what to do, but it was obvious that the tar surrounding his legs had to be removed. I took the baby Amazon into the bathroom; laid out my surgical tools which consisted of a pair of Kathy’s eyelash tweezers, my nose-hair scissors, and a pair of fingernail clippers. I was now ready to operate.
I carefully clipped, snipped, and filed away until his tiny foot was free of the tar that had rendered him flightless. Throughout the operation, he just looked at me through eyes that could barely open. To this day I often wondered what he was thinking.
It was getting late, so I told him he could stay one night while I tried to figure out what to do with him. I went to the bird store and purchased a seed mix and formula for baby Amazons. I also picked up a five-foot palm tree, thinking it would make him feel more at home.
To make sure he wouldn’t need help in the middle of the night, I slept on the downstairs sofa near the palm tree. I woke up to find him on my chest, nestled against my cheek. I was hooked.
I named him Lucky Bird, an appropriate moniker considering his start in life. We had a lot to learn about each other. Nearly two decades later, it’s still a work in progress.
Parrot experts tell me that it’s rare for an Amazon to share its affection. Normally, they tend to be one-person birds. But Lucky is the exception to the rule. Kathy and I take Lucky pretty much everywhere we go. He rides on the handlebar of his stroller and says hello and goodbye to everyone we pass.
From day one, Lucky would perch on my head as I wrote article after article for the various magazine that kept him in bird food. That was all well and good when he weighed less than a candy bar. Even as I am typing this story, he is wandering from my head to my shoulder and occasionally walks across my keyboard. I believe he thinks he’s my editor. In fact, I use L. Byrd as a pseudonym for some of my articles.
Two years ago, Lucky and I teamed up with Carla Chadwick to create a series of children’s books starring Lucky. I wrote the stories and took photos; Carla created all the graphics for the books.
We have a series of four: “Lucky at the Beach,” “Lucky’s Halloween Party,” “Lucky’s Pals,” and (my favorite) “Lucky’s Tales of the Old West.” Lucky’s books can be found on Amazon at luckybirdbooks.com.
