Chapter 4

May 2007

Carl Hauser set his mug down and settled into the chair--one of those ubiquitous classroom models with the spatula-like right arm to accommodate test-taking. Retrieving his worn knapsack from the floor, he searched within. Damn. He'd forgotten his Fish and Rod magazine...

The roomful of parrots continued with the usual yelling, dancing and sultry calls for attention. Carl ignored them, determined to rest his feet for a bit. He reached to a metal lab bench and picked up a well-thumbed copy of Avian Squawk--a popular pet-owner magazine. It opened to a dog-eared page. A paragraph circled in pink felt-tip caught his eye as he sipped his coffee.

"No birdshit!" Carl finished the article and his drink.

Supplies in hand, he started on the first cage, laying a couple of sheets of newspaper on the bottom of the white plastic tray, which slid easily back under the cage. Tall and of stainless steel, it housed four-month-old Ernie, an African Grey formally known as AG-11. Calmly, Ernie watched the disposal of yesterday's mess and re-filling of his food dish. Then he began gnawing at the red wooden block, hanging from a knotted cotton rope, occasionally interrupting his efforts to nibble a meal or chortle out a message of unknown import to his friends.

Carl paid no heed. Like the parrots, he had grown accustomed to the routine.

The room was large and sunny, with two generous skylights and a double-wide screened sliding door that allowed access from the rear of the property. High capacity air cleaners hummed at either end. Lined up six deep on either side, the cages were each four-feet wide, three-feet deep and approximately five-feet tall, a generously sized space, necessary for active creatures, even with their frequent out-of-cage playtime.

Several good-sized potted trees and plants dotted the room, and in its center were three large multi-branched playgyms, each mounted on a wheeled platform. All of them stood five-feet high, like sandblasted trees, and spread almost as wide. Pushed together so the birds could climb from one to another, they sported numerous multi-colored chew toys, ropes and feeding cups.

Continuing his rounds, Carl skirted the "pond." One of the more tool-handy and imaginative graduate assistants had purchased a small plastic garden pool and a small water pump/filter from a local home improvement store. He'd piled loose fieldstones (purloined from a neighboring stone wall, though no one pressed for details) to form steps, and positioned several large stones to serve as little islands. With the "landscaping" the birds could safely climb into the pool and frolic there in their daily communal baths. The pump cleaned, aerated, and circulated the shallow water, producing a mini-geyser that splashed a foot high beyond the pond, further exciting and entertaining everyone--or at least the Greys.

"As caged birds go, no doubt these guys have it pretty good." Carl decided, ticking off the amenities: sunny habitats, socially active and healthy living arrangements, constant attention to their physical hygiene and mental well-being, lots of clean, fresh air and carefully prepared foods, and abundant human interaction. As he knew, for animals involved in an experimental protocol, such generous treatment and care was virtually unprecedented.

The property sat on six rolling acres, formerly part of a dairy farm on a verdant hill just off of Route-292 in scenic Patterson. The smallest town in New York's smallest county--Putnam--Patterson was a quiet, pre-Revolutionary War hamlet that had managed to stave off routine over-development and largely maintain its forested and wetland ecosystems. Almost exactly 70 miles north of Rockefeller University in New York City, the property was also only about 15 miles from the Millbrook Field Research Center.

With its genteel old residence, the Patterson facility, willed to the university by a professor emeritus, generally served as an off-campus faculty conference center.

Both the physical dynamics and political sensitivity of Ross's study demanded a quiet, secure environment; the Patterson place fit the bill perfectly.

Finishing his chores, Carl glanced at his watch. Still time to enough to go scare up another coffee.

Donald Ross stepped off of the Metro-North train after his commute, almost two hours from Grand Central Station. He was supposed to have called so Carl could meet him with the car, but he was glad he'd held off. It was a beautiful spring day, and the house was only about a half mile from the Front Street station. He decided to walk.

Less than ten minutes later he surprised Carl in the kitchen, dicing up fruit for the birds.

"What are you doing here?" Carl wondered. "You were supposed to call for a ride."

"It was too nice out." Ross plucked a grape from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. "Hey, did you know Sybil Ludington was buried in that small cemetery just down the road?" A teen-age Revolutionary War heroine, Sybil had ridden some 40 miles on horseback, at night, through Putnam County to muster the militia against a British attack on Danbury, Conn.

"Yep. Her grave's right behind the church, next to the Colonel." Colonel Ludington, her father, had been the head of the local militia.

"That's something ... I had no idea. So how are things?"

Carl was a Patterson local hired as a caretaker for the house and birds for the duration of the study. A fleshy, 42-year-old machine operator at a local plastics extrusion company (before it relocated to a low-tax state), he had been ready to accept a position in a nearby Home Depot. Then this opportunity had presented itself. The work wasn't very demanding and he could proceed at his own pace. Besides, he didn't have to shave, it was close to home, the people were pretty nice and the parrots were kinda cool. He'd had worse jobs.

"Everything's under control," he answered cheerfully, pushing the large bowl aside and lining up 12 stainless steel cups side-by-side. He started spooning the fruit into the cups. "These birds eat better than I do. All I want to know is who cuts their fruit back in the jungle?"

Ross gave a little laugh. "They do okay on their own. All the fruits and nuts they could want, hanging right there on the trees whenever they want it. No waiting."

Carl placed the full cups onto a plastic tray. "Wanna help feed the little beasts?" He picked up the tray and headed out.

"Why not." Ross followed Carl. "I haven't said hello to them yet. How have they been behaving?"

"Oh, they're behavin' just fine." Carl turned and backed into the double, swinging doors to open them. "But I'll let you in on a little secret: they're noisy, and they're messy."

That elicited another laugh from Ross. "You've noticed? Yeah, they have quite a high floor-to-stomach ratio when it comes to their eating habits. Remember, their job in the wild is to take the top third of the jungle canopy and put it on the bottom third."

"Then they're very good at their jobs..." Carl placed the tray on a nearby table and started slipping the cups into the cages. Ross grabbed a couple and started distributing them as well. They were greeted by loud squawks and yelps, the cautious enthusiasm of parrots confronting the intrusion of something they're pretty sure they want. By the time the men were approaching the end of their respective rows, the occupants yet unserved were screaming hysterically, climbing restless loops inside their cages, even banging their beaks on the steel bars, demanding their share of the goods.

"All named, I see," Ross observed, noticing the tags attached to each of the cages, just below their official identifying numbers. "Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy ... very imaginative."

"The kids were naming them last week." Carl had taken to calling the graduate assistants "the kids."

"Well," Ross, peered down at the names more carefully. "As long as they're not calling them "Einstein" or "Dopey" or anything along those lines. Nothing that might influence how the birds are treated during the experiments."

Carl just shrugged. He had no idea what type of experiments they had planned. From conversations he'd had in passing with the graduate assistants, he knew it had something to do with teaching the birds to talk, but he didn't think that talking parrots were all that big a deal. He just hoped they wouldn't be doing anything cruel or nasty to them.

Ross checked his watch. "I thought they'd be up here by now." Two graduate assistants were scheduled to work with the birds through the afternoon.

"Oh, sorry," Carl said. "They called from the car. They got jammed at the bridge; they're running about 40 minutes late." He picked up the tray. "As long as you're in here, I'm going to go out and mow the lawn. Do you need anything?"

"I'll be okay, thanks."

The six graduate assistants worked in shifts of two or three, depending on the schedule, trying to slowly acclimate the young birds to both the people and conditions of the testing protocols they would be exposed to once they started talking. The birds were individually taken to the testing room--the converted, roomy master bedroom--for 15 or 20 minutes at a time by different graduate assistants (each taking a turn with every bird on a rotating schedule). There they were introduced to various objects, including colorful plastic toys, similar items of differing colors, and different items of similar colors. Some sessions were spent concentrating on the names of the items, other sessions were spent on colors, others on numbers.

"Hey little fella..." Ross stopped at the nearest cage and greeted the bird busy burrowing its beak into its fruit cup. Officially he was labeled AG-5, but the handwritten tag on the cage identified him as Ollie.

"Hey Ollie! How's that apple? Is the apple good?" The bird paused for a moment, a small chunk of apple still in his beak. He made firm eye contact with Ross--big, gray puppy-dog eyes, if such a thing could properly be said about a bird. It would be a year before the bird's gray irises changed to their mature, pale straw color.

"How's that apple, Ollie?" Ross repeated in a soft, friendly tone.

Ollie dropped the apple into the dish, and started softly babbling. No clear words were being enunciated, just a muttered jumble of sounds that were the precursor to solid words and phrases.

Dr. Ross was shocked. The bird was just four months old.

He pulled a small notepad out of his rear pocket and jotted down the bird's number. He needed to check to see if this was a transgenic bird. But as he looked back into those deep, gray eyes, and they looked right back into him, he already knew the answer.