First Year

The desire to own a bird was kindled when my next-door neighbor acquired a peach-faced lovebird. I found the lovebird interesting and beautiful, but too noisy. Since I wanted a small bird that I could handle, and since I had owned a parakeet for a brief time as a child, this became my logical choice. I responded to an ad in a local newspaper for “handfed parakeets,” and found myself looking over a brood of fledglings at the teenaged breeder’s home. Rodney, the breeder, was raising parakeets on a small scale, and I let both him and his mother know that I simply wanted a male who would learn to say a few words (female parakeets rarely, if ever, learn to talk). Rodney’s mother chose a bird for me, and said that she would hand feed it for the next couple of weeks before I took it home.

The bird was brought home on October 6, 1989. Although I didn’t attempt to handle him the first few days, I did speak to him regularly. After a week had passed, I was still pondering possible names, when my niece suggested “Puck.” This name sounded right because it seemed that he might, indeed, become a puckish character. I began touching him after a few more days and experimented with leaving the cage door open and allowing him some flying time. Puck took this in stride, and because it proved easy to catch him, I began leaving the cage door open for ever longer periods. Within a month or so, he was always free to fly.

During this period I repeated to him “Puck, Pucky, pretty bird,” in one-minute sessions for perhaps a total of five minutes daily. However, not a word came forth from this creature for three months. Then, just as I was ready to give up on him ever speaking, he uttered “Puck, pretty bird.” The date was January 13, 1990, and I noted it all on a piece of paper. His next phrase was “I love you”- - words that I also spoke to him daily. Then I heard him say my husband’s name “Mark,” then my name in shortened form “Cami,” then our nephew’s name, and on it went, until by the end of 1990 I had noted 80 words spoken. Simple phrases were heard throughout this first year, such as: “How are you?” and “Mommy’s home.” In mid-1990 I made my first tape recording of Puck talking, but I didn’t both record and transcribe a tape until the following March. It was also in 1991 that I began to note the dates of all words I heard spoken. I think that it was dawning upon me that I was living with a very interesting entity, one that others might want to hear about. I remember periodically telling the pet shop personnel, where I bought bird seed, the “latest count” on Puck’s verbiage and having them exclaim how interesting, how they had never heard of a parakeet with such a large vocabulary!