They’re Battling a Ban on Birds in the Bird Sanctuary

Louis and Dolores Palush will admit it right up front, although it’s not something that they’d be inclined to shout from the rooftops.

“We were busted,” Louis said.

This he told me while seated in the front row of the City Council chambers in the city of Orange, quietly, so as not to create a scene. There were extenuating circumstances, you see, and the Palushes were here to explain.

Who would have guessed that harboring more than five cockateels, or for that matter, finches, or parakeets, or toucans, in the city of Orange, an official bird sanctuary , was against the law?

“And the person who complained, she doesn’t even live here!” Dolores responded in a rather understated huff. “She lives seven miles away.”

You’ve got to believe the Palushes about the seven miles part. I know I do, even if I didn’t clock the distance between their home in Orange and Anaheim Hills, where the complainer lives. But I bet the Palushes did.

They just look like meticulous people. And up until now, they say, they’ve been strict law abiders. They’ve lived in Orange for 23 years, been married 41.

Within the past two years, they’ve both retired from their jobs--he from Ford Aerospace and she from the phone company--and they’d been enjoying whiling away the days by themselves, or with their three children, or their eight grandchildren, or their more-than-five-birds.

Which, of course, is where they got into trouble.

“When the officer came over she was really very nice, apologetic and all,” Dolores recalled later in the couple’s home.

Dolores showed me the official notice of a municipal code violation in the city of Orange. It was no nonsense.

“We were busted,” Louis said again.

“She said they usually don’t enforce these kinds of things unless somebody complains,” Dolores said, understanding.

But who would complain about the Palushes’ adorable cockateels, with the bright orange cheeks and the radical cowlicks, whose number at one time reached about 70 (but who’s really counting?) and who for the past five years have lived in the aviary Louis built off the back porch?

How about the absentee owner of a neighboring house who wasn’t exactly thrilled with Louis’ suggestion that she do something about the pine tree that was leaving pitch all over the hood of his car?

Louis picked up some of the offending pine needles from his driveway, showed me the pitch, and asked me to imagine the hot summer sun melding it to the hood of his car.

The Palushes figure the landlady is taking her revenge out on the birds, even though the pitch is still present.

Nonetheless, the Palushes have been doing their best to comply with the code (ignorance being no excuse in the eyes of the law) and have been selling off their beloved cockateels through classified newspaper ads like so many used cars. (At last count they were down to 17.) But it’s been rough, which is why they found themselves before the City Council on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

The more the Palushes got to thinking about it all, the more they kept saying, “This just isn’t right.” The spirit of civic activism was taking hold.

Dolores batted out a letter, typed entirely in capital letters and making liberal use of exclamation points, that explained to the council the injustice of the municipal code as it applied to the family cockateels. That brought Mayor Pro Tempore Gene Beyer calling, and after formally meeting the outlawed avians, he told the Palushes the matter would be brought before the City Council in a week.

Dolores began building their case, compiling copies of other city codes governing aviaries and collecting written testimonials from the neighbors.

Several called the couple “caring and loving.” Another, echoing a common theme, found the birds’ chirping “relaxing and therapeutic,” especially in light of the proximity of the Costa Mesa Freeway.

So as we sat in the chambers of the Orange City Council, it looked good for the Palushes. But Dolores and Louis were still uneasy.

Dolores ended up flubbing a few of the lines from her prepared statement, and Louis said afterward that he hadn’t been so nervous since his wedding day.

Still, the council members were a generally sympathetic lot.

Beyer, reporting on his visit to the Palush home, pronounced it clean and well-kept and noted that “one of the rascals” landed on his head when let out of the aviary, “but didn’t leave anything behind.”

Mayor Don E. Smith would later say that although he wasn’t quite clear on the significance of Orange’s designation as a bird sanctuary, “We’re pretty proud of it.”

Councilman Fred L. Barrera did have a small concern about the type of birds that would be regulated by any future ordinance. “No vultures or anything like that,” he said.

In the end, the council voted 4 to 0 to take up the Palushes’ request for a new code. The staff will study the matter and report back on Nov. 14.

And what of the complaining landlady?

“I don’t think she knew about the meeting,” Delores said. “And we certainly weren’t going to tell her.”