POCKET
POCKET LEFT EARTH CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING 2002, WHILE SLEEPING AND NESTLED SOFTLY NEXT TO ME. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT HE WAS A BELOVED FEATHEREDNESS WHO FILLED THIS EXHAUSTED HEART WITH BLISS. (As I write this, it's April 2003, and I'm getting to know a new roommate -- Kismet the Conure. After reading about Pocket, please come visit him.) So many people looking at my website have asked me about Pocket, that I'm inspired to devote this section to my dearest familiar, Pocket the Feathered Emerald. Forgive me for doting, but is he not dear??? He loves to pick at the threads of this Guatemalan fabric and weave them into the netting of his mansion. Not a cage, but a mansion, because he's free to fly out whenever he wants. He gets back to his castle by climbing up a tall ladder, which people love to watch him do. Pocket is, like me, a hermit, however, and spends most of his time on his favorite perch, under a warm umbrella lamp, weaving his fabric and preening his feathers. His flying usually occurs in the morning and in the evening, when he takes four to six flights into the outer world of our studio. He circles around the room, walks with his side-to-side pigeon-toed gait to his ladder, picks at the rug under it a while, then climbs the ladder to his mansion. His mansion is in front of a long window overlooking our garden and the birdbath and feeder. He often peers up at the sky, watching a crow flying high, and definitely observes his distant cousins, the house finches, pecking at food and dipping in the birdbath outside. Pocket parrots come from the lowlands of Peru, a terrain much like New Mexico's dry, dusty, arroyo-abundant land. Also called Grey Cheeked Parakeets, Pocket parrots were quite popular for a while a decade ago. They cost double the $200 I paid for Pocket 15 years ago, so you need to be sure you want this bird! They're also known as women's watch birds because they squawk loudly when someone is at the door. They are very possessive, and demand that you love them best. Like any bird, if you want the bird to be your familiar, don't get them a mate. You are the mate! They got the name Pocket parrot because they are small enough to fit into your pocket, though my feathered emerald never liked going into a pocket. I called him Pocket because I wasn't feeling very original when I had to name him, and Pocket seemed a good enough moniker. He has proven to be a pocket of love in my life. By the way, a true Parakeet is a miniature parrot, not the budgerias we call parakeets. My Pocket, as you can see, looks like a miniature parrot, complete with the parrot hookbill and bright green feathers. He eats apples, birdseed, pomegranates (in season, which they are now), grapes and carrot cake! I get the fruit-sweetened carrot cake, and put vitamins in it. He likes only sweet things. I make him a mash of lentils, barley and sweet rice, but he only nibbles on it. That's why I dose the carrot cake, his mainstay solid food, with good vitamins. He loves millet stix, as do most feathered beings, and honey stix. Okay, so much for the facts. Here are my experiences with Pocket the Feathered Emerald. Sometimes I call him Prince Pocket. He rules the house. For no one else at this crone-time of my life would I get up and before coffee make breakfast! His food comes first, after, of course, the necessary morning ablutions. But the most exquisite aspect of my relationship with Pocket is that every morning at sunrise he flies from his sleep-house onto my bed, gets under the covers and nestles against my thigh until I rise, which is at noon! I wake every morning, then, with love in my heart and love thoughts spinning in my mind, and his tiny feathery warmth pressed against my body. Very healing. As to his sleep-house, which I also call his R.V. because I take him out in it when we travel, it's a smaller cage that I cover at night so he has privacy and darkness for his snooze time. I bring this sleep-house/R.V. into my bedroom when I retire, hang it on a lovely stand, and there he sleeps until sunrise, when he flies down to nap with me. (I rise at noon because I retire at 5 A.M.)
I took Pocket on my book tour with me in 1992, for Dear Writer in the Window, in his R.V.; buckled the R.V. into the passenger side seat, and when we were on the open road opened his door so he could fly to my shoulder and see the vista. He was in the stores as part of my set up when I sat in storefront windows answering questions to promote the book. He was a real ham, coming to the front of his R.V. so he could see and be seen when reporters came with cameras to do a story about the Writer in the Window. When we got back from the tour, Pocket became ill. At first I didn't notice, because birds don't show their illness til it's way late into it. I'm sure the journey, three months on the road, was taxing to his tiny nervous system; but I was told that three months was too long to be away from a bird that I was so bonded to -- not for me! but for the bird. I think a major contributor to his illness was the fact that he had me all to himself for three months and when we got back he was once again surrounded by my other friends, fifty some-odd finches and four cockateils, all flying free in our house! As one friend told me: how would you like sixty humans chattering around you when you were feeling tired and taxed? I had to make a decision then, and in doing so I learned the efficacy of sacrifice, something I'd never believed in before. I gave the other birds away: not an easy task, either, just the finding of people who were into birds. But I loved them dearly, and it broke a part of my heart and had me grieving for a whole year, whenever I thought about them. It was good for Pocket, tho, and after the birds were all gone I devoted myself to healing him, with Reiki, with hands on energy treatments, with a lot of heat: big utility bills and walking around in a sarong mid winter, the heat was so high; a necessity for a sick bird. And I had to give him antibiotics too for a whole year. In fact, the doctors advised me to keep him on them for his whole life, because the only way to tell for sure if the illness was finished was to do a biopsy, and that, I knew, would kill such a wee critter as Pocket. But, after a year and a couple of months on the antibiotics, given in a dropper into his mouth, Pocket himself told me no more: he stood behind his ladder and wouldn't come to me as he usually did. I'd been monitoring his behavior and eating and having his blood and poop tested, so I knew that outward signs of the illness were gone. His refusal to take anymore medicine seemed right. I never liked giving it to him, since I don't like antibiotics myself. Well, he's been healthy, cheerful, totally recovered ever since. Love heals. Yes, the antibiotics also healed, but without the love, he wouldn't have gotten better. The vet told me at the start the illness he had was usually fatal. In August of 2000 we moved from the pristine community of Santa Fe to the big city of Albuquerque. Pocket was patient with the move, and took little time to adjust to the new surroundings; which are very nice for him as well as for me. He's got his own little nook and a window where the birds living in the overhanging tree entertain him at the birdfeeder attached to the window (we live on the top floor of an old Victorian house). It did take him a month or so to get used to these outside, distant cousin birds flocking so close to him, but now he accepts them and observes them astutely. Below is a picture of Pocket's new alcove abode. The cage on the top is his RV and bedroom, the larger on the bottom is his main castle. You can see the ladder he climbs up, and the green lamp to the left has been with him all his life; it's turned away here because it was summer when the picture was taken, but in the winter it shines over his cage for light and warmth. It's an old laboratory lamp, and the bulb is covered by a sliding metal cover so he's not blinded by the light.
So that's the story of Prince Pocket the Feathered Emerald. Hope it brings you to consider having a familiar in your life, and maybe to make it a feathered one!
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