Fitness Files: Nothing like the love of a bird

My gym is a friendlier place when I spot Maestro, a companion dog, on his mat, eyes on his master.

Maestro is a brindle mixed breed with cleft head, amber eyes and short, floppy ears that recede in supplication. He seems to say “Go ahead and love me.” Though his body language beckons, I’ve learned not to contact working dogs.

“Go ahead, pet him,” his young master urges. I rub Maestro’s silky chest, feeling the aura of calm he lends our noisy gym.

We know of the dog-human therapeutic relationship. But have you heard about birds?

Just the other day, a carefully taped mailing envelope arrived. The return address said it was from Miriam, a friend who had just celebrated her 100th birthday. As a social worker in the 50s, she treated veterans, so she gravitates to successful programs.

She sent Charles Siebert’s recent New York Times Magazine article, “Of a Feather,” where he describes the strong bonds between abandoned pet parrots and wounded veterans.

When understanding bird psychology, it helps to know that wild ancestors of dogs and cats existed in social packs or prides, giving them tools transferable to human groups. Parrots and crows exist in flocks.

Lorin Lindner, a Los Angeles Veterans Administration psychologist, explains, “Parrots have so many social neurons.… Their brain is filled with the capacity to mirror their flock’s [current state] … it’s crucial for them to know … danger signs … when to roost. They’re so … socially responsive that they easily transfer that to us.”

Siebert, supporting Lindner’s quote with neurology, said the ratio of brain to body size of the parrot is similar to that of the higher primates, and so they are able to problem-solve. And, he added, they also exhibit two aspects of intelligence long thought to be exclusively human, “episodic memory and …the ability to attribute mental states, like intention, desire and awareness, of yourself and others.” In other words, parrots exhibit empathy.

Along with parrots’ flock behavior, Siebert says, they have the “cognitive capacities” of 4- to 5-year-old children and life spans of up to 70 years. When humans take them as pets, parrots are deprived of “their natural will to flock,” which they transfer to their human caretakers, forming intense attachments.

Lindner relocated Serenity Park, an aviary for abandoned pet parrots, to the VA’s Westwood campus. Every parrot at Serenity Park was traumatized when their original owners abandoned them. They are survivors who scream in language learned by mirroring their absent owners, pluck out their feathers and cower in their cages.

At first, Lindner saw no connection between her aviary, first located in Ojai, and veterans. Then one day she asked sullen veterans who “sat around with their arms crossed during group therapy” to help build an aviary. “All of a sudden these same tight-lipped guys are cuddling up with the parrots and talking away,” observed Lindner.

Recently Lindner compared the progress of veterans working at Serenity Park to those in the VA community garden nearby. In terms of staying sober, keeping appointments, reuniting with family and finding gainful employment. “the veterans working with the parrots are doing better than those spending time in the garden,” she says.

In one veteran’s words, “To have a relationship with a parrot, that parrot has to select me. In order for that to happen, I have to come in open and quiet and calm.... Now I’m with a psychiatrist, and I’m talking about how this bird didn’t feel so good today.... I’m talking about how the bird was feeling, but I’m also transferring my own emotions. So being with the parrots allows me to take that third-person look at my own trauma.”

Another veteran, Lilly Love, who’d received a formal diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder after years of destructive and addictive behavior, said that at Serenity Park, she entered the cage of a caique parrot named Cashew and engaged in one of “many daily duets” she performs with the winged residents. The bird pauses to give a gentle beak brush to Love, then cranes its head upward for a kiss, Love relates in the article.

Cashew’s wings were clipped too closely by a former owner, so Love, who has gained the parrot’s confidence, tosses Cashew into the air, helping her relearn flight.

“Their spirit gives me the will … for another day.” says Love. “They’re all victims here. Kind of like what the veterans have been through.… I see the mutual trauma … and my heart wants to go out and nurture … doing that helps me deal with my trauma.”

Today I saw a golden retriever at the credit union and a white curly pooch in a cart at the market. No birds. Yet.

Newport Beach resident CARRIE LUGER SLAYBACK is a retired teacher who, since turning 70, has run the Los Angeles Marathon, placing first in her age group twice.