"It was in April of 2001 that I got Pix from a man who sells baby parrots to our neighbor who loves to collect exotic animals. He showed me the tiny chick inside the covered wicker basket and asked if I'm interested in buying a bird since our neighbor already bought five and couldn't pay for another one (not to mention the fact that it's the only one that's stark naked and really tiny compared to the other five bought earlier). I took a peek not knowing really what to do since I've never cared for a bird before. I do love animals and would have wanted to be a vet when I was kid but I haven't raised anything other than cats and dogs. Besides I am not an advocate of this exotic bird business in my country. It was at the time wherein owning a talking Myna bird had become a status symbol because the cost of each bird is way above the average working persons' monthly income. And I hate to see those beautiful birds die in their cages a year or two after they were bought. I do love birds but I want to see them in the wild flying and thriving in their natural habitat. I grew up in a beach front wherein my grandfather has a huge orchard and it's inhabited by different kinds of birds. I used to sit by him every afternoon when I was little and listen to the different songs they make as the sun sets in the horizon. It was pretty cool and that's exactly the thing I want. But time changes everything and the exotic bird business in my country (Philippines) is booming.

So it was just out of pity that I bought Pix from the man and he sold him to me for only about eight hundred pesos (about $15 in today's peso-dollar rates) after much haggling. He actually doesn't have much choice since he wanted to get rid of the chick anyway. To make the long story short, I took the tiny, naked bird in and said goodbye to my grocery money for that week pretty much prepared that it won't survive anyway. So I asked him what to feed this kind of bird and all he said was feed it with banana as needed meaning every time it opens its mouth. So that's just exactly what I did and I placed the chick in my mothers' old sewing machine drawer and lined it with cotton and some pieces of flannel cloth and fed it with mashed bananas every day. A week passed and the chick was still alive; thriving in bananas, water and lots of love and patience everyday. I was at that time still unaware of the kind of bird exactly Pix is. All I know was that he's a parrot.

I'm a high school chemistry teacher but at that time, I was the only teacher in our school who has a good computer background and knows the net, so about a week and a half after I bought Pix I was sent on a seminar about putting up a computer class in our school and the use of computers as a teaching tool. It was a month long seminar in another island and I have to grudgingly leave Pix under the care of another much inexperienced being. I wasn't hoping to see him alive after I came back from the seminar but he made it and grew some feathers too. He was already strong enough to chew on anything he could get his orange beak on so I placed him on a wire meshed cage that didn't last long because he kind of chewed the cage to bits. He's already had a lot of accidents around the house because I seldom put him in the cage for I feel so sorry for him to be in there. He has chewed on fly baits, rat poison, batteries, cell phone chargers, our entire Christmas light bulbs and lived! By the way, I forgot to mention that I used the free time I had on the seminar to surf the net wherein I found your site and had a great time learning about Pix, his kind, diet and most of the essential stuffs I need to keep him to a ripe old age of about 70+ years. Now, he sometimes dines with us and has his share of people food aside from his daily fruits and seeds entrée.

He's five years old, knows more than 20 words, can whistle "happy birthday" off key and has his own version of the do-re-mi scale. Up to now I still don't know whether Pix is a male or female but I always refer to him as a male since he loves cuddling only to us females in the household and gives a loud screech to the male members. Another thing that he loves to do is to chew on my bra straps which I believe is a typical "male thing"!

He's a much loved and pampered bird in our household and has his share of popularity in the neighborhood too. I bring him with me everywhere I go and he instantly gets a crowd after one off key happy birthday whistle. His favorite phrase is "praise the Lord" which I taught him to say after chewing the rat poison. I barely slept that night watching out for signs of bleeding and hemorrhage. I really thought that was the end of him so it was Praise the Lord indeed when he survived the 3-day period I gave him.  He now has plenty of toys to chew on and I had his cage built in a huge tree so he can chew all day away from danger. Thank you so much for putting up the site just when I needed it most. By the way, vets in my part of the country don't know anything about caring for a parrot. I tried bringing him to the vet who treats my dogs and he said he has no idea how to take care of birds and just told me that I would know that a parrot is sick by looking at its feathers. Well, to sum it up I didn't have any professional help and technology in bringing up Pix from a naked hatchling that he used to be to a beautiful bird that he is now. All I had were mashed bananas, water, your site and lots of love. And it worked!

God bless and more power to you and your staff."

Ching Lapatha-Bandola
Uriarte Subdivision
La Carlota City, Philippines