My blue fronted Amazon parrot, Tarah, does not have clipped wings. However like many birds that were clipped during the fledging process, he has never quite learned the kind of flight skills that might earn him the title of a ‘flyer’. I often said he has his flight feathers, but he doesn’t fly. Well, one day, I learned the hard way, that this wasn’t exactly true.

I was visiting my parents as I was moving from southern California to northern California and when I arrived, I brought Tarah in his cage to my old bedroom. I opened the door to his cage, to allow him some much needed free time, but before I knew it, he bolted off, through the bedroom door, took a right, and made his way down the hall. He then banked left and flew through the living room. At that very moment my father was just opening the sliding glass door to step out onto the deck. Guess who went through the door too? The deck was on the second floor, so my bird had two stories of lift to assist him on his grand flight down the fairway of the golf course behind the house. Thank goodness he was a green flying brick. He ran out of gas and slowly descended to the soft green grass before a tree offered its branches as refuge. Juiced by adrenalin, my feet barely touched the ground as I ran after him.

Read more in the magazine…