Louie

When we moved to Salisbury I figured we had enough birds. It was not an easy task to move everyone. I can't remember exactly how many we had but it was somewhere around eight.
I still kept in touch with my vet's assistant even when I was moving out of the metro-west area. She was also in the process of moving and selling her home around the same time we were. She was trying to sell a HUGE home in a declining real estate market hoping to make a decent profit so she could retire to Florida.
When she finally sold her home she packed up quite a few birds in a van to take down to Florida. Some of them, she couldn't take with her so she called all her 'bird buddies" in hopes of re-homing some of them.
She called me to see if would take "Louie". Louie was a wild caught Princess of Wales parakeet that was bounced house to house. He was a "rescue bird". Louie had a leg band on him that read, "S3 16F 95 121". I'm not sure what these numbers meant except that his hatch date was around 1995. She was afraid Louie would not able to survive the long ride to Florida.
I had said, "no".
Another friend of ours needed to find a nice home for their bare eye cockatoo. I had said, "OK, but if "Kiwi" doesn't fit in with the flock I would have to give her back". They agreed with that deal.
Kiwi is a sweet loving bird but extremely demanding of your undivided attention. If you are not sitting right next to her or holding her she would scream bloody murder. She could be like a 3 year old having an hour long temper tantrum. At 5:00, when I was cooking supper, it was Kiwi's witching hour.
She would scream.
It didn't really bother me too much because I know that is what big parrots do but my poor cockatiels were a mess. They would crash into things because of the alarm calls. Sadly, I knew I could not keep Kiwi because of this. Reluctantly, I had to give Kiwi back to her owners.
When my vet's assistant asked me to take Louie I told her what happened with Kiwi and how my poor frightened cockatiels went nuts.. I did not want a repeat of that scene again. She again, begged me to take Louie because no one would take him and that he would not survive the long trip to Florida. My husband was also opposed to the idea as well.
Well, two days later I drove down to Marlboro and picked up Louie.
Louie was about the size and girth of a cockatiel but had long tail feathers. He too was from Australia like cockatiels were from originally. He kind of surprised me because he talked. He would say, "Louie Louie" "Whatcha doin"?" and he would wolf whistle and make video game noises.
I was mostly worried how Louie and the cockatiels would react towards each other.
Button immediately flew over to his cage and sat perched on his food dish. Louie's eyes would flash, his feather flushed an iridescent shade and cooed to her. They were instantly pals.
Button would sometimes sneak in his cage and eat Louie food. Louie would coo and jabber to her. She seemed A-OK with that. I was worried Louie would peck her but he never made any aggressive moves what so ever. If anything, he seemed to be crooning love songs to her.
Sometimes, even Lucille would sneak in his cage by pushing the food dish to the side and munch happily on Louie's nutriberries. Linus would go absolutely NUTS when she did this. It was as if he was screaming, "how dare you go in another man's cage!" She of course, would ignore his rants . Linus would then try to get in Louie's face squawking raucously expressing his displeasure.
Louie turned out to be a fine addition to the flock. He became a good friend to Button. The other birds kind of picked on Button and treated her like she was retarded so Louie helped re-socialize Button back in the flock.