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An Imaginary Profile of the Very Real Parrot Lady

Rosemary Grewin exits her apartment building approximately every afternoon and perches herself on the edge of small enclosure that protects a sidewalk tree. She always faces towards the building, which seems a little unusual, as most of the action happens in the street. Then again, Rosemary doesn’t seem to desire entertainment, so it doesn’t matter. She places the bird cage down next to her on the pavement, and slumps forward a little bit, bending her midsection into an impossibly deep crease of pudge. Her floral dress is modestly cut and her hair is messy. Croaky, the parrot in the cage, is impeccably clean in comparison, and much more vibrant.

I approach Rosemary one afternoon when Croaky has gotten too loud to ignore. I ask her how long she’s had the parrot.

“Oh – Croaky, longer than I can remember.”

I push her to give me a parrot age.

“I’m serious, eh, longer than I can remember. Everything is fuzzy past a few years ago. The doctor, eh, he told me that it was something with a long name – this memory thing. But I don’t worry. I have Croaky to remind me.”

I ask her to clarify.

“Croaky, eh, he is excellent with names and faces,” Rosemary tells me. “An old man came to the door last week and I didn’t have any clue who he was, eh. But Croaky, he told me his name was Joe Morazzo. And it was! That was the man’s name. Eh, love my bird.”

I am suspicious of what Rosemary tells me mainly on account of the fact that Croaky only croaks. He doesn’t speak. Despite my fear of embarrassing Rosemary, I delicately proceed to push the subject.

“Eh no no no, not like a human, just small syllables, eh? Enough to make my energy jump like a pepper. I give him liver bits when he helps, so he’s always eager, eh. Little Croaky, such a good boy.”

Croaky looks up at me from the sidewalk. His parrot head is cocked to the left and his eyes twinkle in an unusually intelligent fashion. He twitches a green wing. He poops on the pre-soiled newsprint that lines his cage.

“Eh, Croaky,” Rosemary begins again, “he flew away once, when I left the window of my apartment open to let the paint fumes clear. I was painting my kitchen you know, prune purple and kiwi green because it seemed like I could use a little bit of that. When Croaky flew away I didn’t worry too much - just baked brownies and waited for him to return. And when he did, you know what?”
She waits for me to ask her “What?”

“When eh, when he came flying back in through that window he had a woman’s id card in his beak. And you know who that woman was?”

She waits for me to ask her “Who?”

“None other than my dear old friend Ruth Cohen who I’d forgotten all about. What are the chances of that?”

Croaky croaks at me, and I conclude that I can’t really fathom what the chances of that actually are.