Our First Bird...Petie

By Joanne and John Muller
A friend of ours always had birds and my husband and I really enjoyed them. We had lots of pets... dogs, cats ,turtles, rabbits and reptiles but never a bird. We couldn't really afford one. We had just bought a home on 2 1/2 acre's of land in the country. On one early Saturday morning, our friend John called and wanted to know if we still wanted a bird. He said there was a old woman he knew who had 2 birds in an outside cage. For the past 5 years she had been trying to breed them, but every year the male would kill the female and she would have to replace the female. But now, she just didn't want the male any longer and was willing to sell him for $200. He said that was a great deal. He said the bird was a big bird but that was all we knew. Anyway we were excited and ran off to a pet store to buy a cage and what ever else we needed. The store we chose happened to be all the way in New Jersey and the manager of the store was my older brother. I thought if anyone knew what we needed it would be him. We had so much stuff when we left that store that it filled my whole van. Everything from bird books, a large cage with a perch on top, toys, food, etc. All of this for a bird that we had no idea what it was. Looking back it was really funny. We rushed home to set up everything in time for the arrival of my newest baby and our first bird. The truck pulled in and out jumped our friend John with a box. We all ran to him and finally got to look at the most amazing bird we had ever seen....it was white with a bright orange crest. We took out our book and found out it was a CITRON COCKATOO and he was hissing like crazy at us, but we all just sat there and stared. HE WAS AMAZING! I fell in love that day back in 1988 and now sixteen years later we still are amazed by our bird Petie. I remember the first time he got on me. I felt blessed because it took a long time for him to trust me. Because of Petie we looked into bird clubs in our area and found the best one with the greatest people. It was The "Catskill Bird Club". We made a lot of friends there...some that are gone now and some that we will never forget. Gereldine, Matt, Richie, AnnMarie, Mary just to name a few and of course Dr. Stein who when he came out of his office with Petie always said, "He's fine...it's my blood". Petie always did love the taste him! Well, thanks for all of the memories and for letting me go on about my best Friend PETE, our first bird, and the one that still runs our home. Hi to all....