I got the call from Omar’s one afternoon at work.  They had just received a baby Grey and I was next on the list.  Was I interested?  Interested?!  I don’t think I bothered to tell Arthur I was leaving until I was halfway to the pet store.

Most breeders will separate the mother from her clutch after the babies have fledged.  That means they have grown their flight feathers and are technically capable of flying.  But they are not fully weaned, so they have to be fed formula for another few weeks until they can crack seeds on their own.  So, you choose your bird and then it stays at the store until it is ready to come home with you.

On the way there I asked the Lord to alert me if this bird wasn’t the right one.  He would have had to use a bullhorn, though.  Or maybe a two-by-four upside the head.  By the time I was holding this adorable, clumsy, scared out of his mind baby parrot, it would have taken something more than the still, small voice to tell me I should refuse him.  I wanted nothing more than to hold him forever.

He was mine.

I became a fixture at Omar’s.  Just about every night I would go there after work for about an hour.  I would usually catch them right at feeding time.  I learned that feeding them is an art form.  You have to get the formula mixture and the temperature just right so that the birds can and will eat it.  Not that it matters much, though.  Even when you shove the syringe halfway to their toes they still end up wearing most of it.  But one way or another, enough food would get into their crop that it would swell up and they would just sit there in a food coma.  This was the perfect bonding opportunity and the only time when he would ever nuzzle me so close.  I would hold him up by my neck and he would snuggle in and fall asleep.

The weekends were particularly fun because there would be a ton of people buzzing about the store, asking questions, talking about their birds, and admiring mine.  I even had one guy ask me out on a date.  I told him no.  In the bird world, it is about the birdage, not the person.  Who cares what he looks like, smells like, or acts like; or if he is rich and famous or poor as a church mouse.  The real question is; what kind of bird does he have?  And in my book, Macaws are fine for a little fun here and there, but not for long term.

One of the traditions at Omar’s was to have each new owner create a sign with their bird’s name on it.  Then the visitors at the store would know which birds were taken and could even call them by name if they wanted to.  Well, I had been laboring over a name for quite some time already, and still hadn’t come up with one.  Naming things is not my forte and this one mattered a lot to me.  My friends at the store were anxious to see what I would finally come up with.  It amused them to no end when I hung this sign above his stand.

Philip.  Not exactly a common parrot name, or common any pet name.  And not Phil, either.  Philip.  It was the name for a special kind of friend.  The name of someone who was also, by the way, according to certain reliable sources, translated.  If that’s not unlocking secrets of the universe, I don’t know what is!

I got used to people’s funny smiles when they saw what his name was.  It amused ME to watch them try to smother the laugh that was threatening to burst out their eyeballs.  Most of them choked out a “oh, Philip!  How cute.”

Philip and I were off to a great start.  Already coloring outside the lines.

But as is true in all relationships, events transpire that show you some things inside you that you didn’t know were there.  I was about to be tried.  Not by Philip.  By my competition.