I knew I wanted birds in this book. Darlene, the owner of Feathered Friends in Santa Fe, told me about Pat Wright, who is known as “the bird lady of Los Alamos.” Darlene will sometimes call Pat when someone needs to give up a bird. Pat has nested an entire flock of birds in her doublewide trailer, each inhabiting a state-of-the-art white steel-wire cage. The first thing Pat said when I arrived for the shoot was, “I hate to have my picture taken. The only reason I’m doing this is because I want my birds to be shown off. I love them that much that I am willing to compromise.” There was no way you could miss her devotion to these beautiful creatures. Their animated exchanges are a joy to witness. Pat confided that from the age of four on, she had a recurrent dream of flying. She would look up at the sky and feel her body flying across her front lawn. It wasn’t until she was nineteen years old, however, that Pat was exposed to her first bird, her friend’s parakeet. It was immediate love. Prior to that, she thought birds were just animals that sat in cages. So she read up on birds and bought her own parakeet. After the parakeet, Pat got a cockatiel, then a conure (a small parrot), then her first big Amazon parrot named Jake. Jake died last year from mold in a peanut. It devastated Pat. She still misses Jake. Eventually, she got an African gray, a cockatoo, and two ecclectus birds. Most of her birds have either been rescued or adopted. When you have as many birds as Pat does, and she has thirteen of them now, you have to be careful about other birds you introduce. After all, the new kid on the block has to be good for the whole flock. “I can make a decision upon first sight,” Pat shared. “I pretty much know once I see a bird if it’s going to work with my birds or not.” Occasionally she becomes a foster care mom, caring for a bird and socializing them enough to be adoptable. She also boards birds for people going away for a short while. The birds like to be in the same room with Pat. She has a freelance sewing and alteration business that she runs out of her kitchen, the room some of the birds call home. Sometimes she’ll be in the middle of sewing and one of the birds will say, “Whatcha doing?” I asked if the birds ever got out of their cages. On those one or two incredibly rare moments that his cage wasn’t locked, Marvin sprang himself and the others free! He’s a military macaw, an olive green color, and she calls him “my little Houdini. I’ve come home from work several times and birds will be flying all around because Houdini has done his trick and let them out of their cages.” Quincy can also undo the locks. In his case, it’s not to set the others free. Rather, it’s a tactic for him to check out the other birds’ cages to see if they have something better to eat. Another bird, Scooter, who is pictured on top of the couch, is a blue-gold macaw. Scooter is very talkative. One day, Pat was in another room and heard Scooter call out, “Hello, hello.” Feeling mischievous, Pat decided not to answer. She wanted to see what else Scooter would say. A few minutes later she heard, “Hi. Hi.” She stayed silent, and Scooter then said, “Wanna come out. Wanna come out.” When Pat still didn’t answer, he called, “Pat. Pat.” At this point Pat was laughing hard. But without a response, Scooter continued, next calling Pat’s son: “Ian. Ian.” All of this, mind you, is in Pat’s New York accent, which the birds mimic. When neither Ian nor Pat answered, Scooter called out: “Olivia. Olivia.” Pat’s daughter, Olivia, who thought her mother was calling her, came running out. “What, ma?” Scooter finally ended his plea with, “Help, help. Wanna come out. Wanna come out.” They eventually did let him out, once they were done rolling on the floor with laughter. When I asked Pat how she might be different because of her birds, she said: “These birds give me a huge amount of love and joy. They fill a void in me. People don’t know who I am until they come to my house and see me with my animals. This is Pat. They define the person that I am.” Do her neighbors mind cockatoos that scream so loudly that Ian and Olivia can’t hear the TV? She says she’s been blessed with tolerant neighbors. “It would be very hard and upsetting to give any one of these birds away. I think I would rather find a new home. You know, Jill, I just don’t get people who don’t love animals. I can’t relate to them at all. I really feel like I can talk to my animals,” said Pat. “I read The Pet Psychic by Sonia Fitzpatrick and it gave me the guts to try to communicate with the birds through mental pictures. It definitely works.” Her bird Pepsi is sitting on my head in the author picture. After much effort, just as we got everyone set up for the shoot, Pepsi suddenly flew into the room and landed purposefully on my head. It was one of the most bizarre feelings I can remember, having those tiny feet walking around lightly, beak pecking occasionally as I tried to focus my camera. When I talked to Pat later on the phone, she told me that Pepsi wanted to come to the phone and say hi, but was upside down inside a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.