Alex & Me - How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--And Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene Pepperberg

Author:Irene Pepperberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Animal communication, Birdwatching Guides, Animals, Behavior, Nature, Science, African gray parrot - Behavior, Ornithology, African gray parrot, Cognition in animals, General, Birds & Birdwatching, Life Sciences, Pets, Zoology, Essays, Human-animal relationships, Animal Rights, Birds
ISBN: 9780061673986
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

Not too long before we left Chicago, Alex gave me a terrible scare. In early September 1990, I returned from a short trip and found a message from a student on my answering machine. “I had to take Alex to the vet today, because he was wheezing badly,” it said. “Call the vet immediately.” I did, right away.

“Susan, what’s wrong?” Susan Brown was one of three partners in the vet practice in a western suburb of Chicago that I routinely used.

“It’s another one of these cases,” she said. “Aspergillosis.” Aspergillosis is a fungal infection that can affect the chest cavity and the lungs. Alex probably caught it from contaminated corncob bedding placed at the bottom of his cage in my absence when the usual pine shavings weren’t available. Several cases had turned up at local vet practices in the previous few weeks. “Look, it’s not bad,” Susan said, trying to calm me. “He’ll survive. I’m at the movies. I’ll call you when I get out.” Susan had one of the first cell phones. It looked like a brick and weighed as much as one.

I went straight to my bird medical book, looked up aspergillosis, and froze. “Make your bird comfortable and wait for death” was the essential message. I was now panicked, and could barely contain myself until Susan called. She again reassured me, saying that the book was out of date and that Alex was going to be OK. “Trust me,” she said. “I’ll give you some meds for him. Come get them tomorrow.”

I medicated Alex for about a week in the lab, but he was getting no better. I talked with Susan every day. Eventually she told me to bring him in so they could try some new drugs. Apparently, the outlook wasn’t as rosy as Susan had implied, because treatment for aspergillus infection in Greys at that time was not well developed. The one vet who specialized in the disease had developed drug regimes for raptors: eagles and other birds that weighed twelve times as much as Alex. Susan told me that she and her colleagues would have to experiment with the drug dosage, so Alex would have to stay in the hospital for a while.

When I was getting ready to leave, I said, “Goodbye, Alex.” He looked at me, obviously feeling lousy and frightened, sitting in a small veterinary cage. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice. “Come here. Wanna go back.” He sounded so pathetic, it really tore me up. “It’s OK, Alex,” I said as reassuringly as possible. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be back tomorrow.” I had been saying that to him for a while, but this time it really meant something. It was important for him to understand that I was going to come back and that I wasn’t just going to leave him there.

Each day I got up early, went to Northwestern, taught my class, and then drove an hour to the vets’ office, to spend as much time as I could with Alex.

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