Currently my family is on vacation in Cape Cod.
Pearl, who thinks any travel route that lasts longer than 5 minutes is unacceptably long, is staying at Ray’s birdie hotel right now, where he hangs out all day with professional singing canaries, finches, parrotlets, parakeets and other winged sidekicks.
Not having Pearl with me has opened up large amounts of free time to do, well, everything. Like reading, for instance. And since I prefer books with feathers whenever possible, the first book on my hit list was quite naturally titled “Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo®.”
Snowball’s story was penned by best-selling author Sy Montgomery with the specific goal of appealing to children grades 3 through 8. Since the book also strongly appealed to me (age 42 and three-quarters) I can only assume I slept through those grades the first time around (if the instructors had had the foresight to include large white dancing parrots in their lesson plans I probably would have stayed awake).
It has also not escaped the attention of Pearl’s proud Mommy that this feathery media phenom has his own book, his own clothing and jewelry line, his own music and video DVD and a variety of branded buttons and stickers. Clearly we are way behind.
Snowball also inspired the world’s first Bird Dance-Off Contest. This, of course, is because Snowball can actually dance.
In lieu of dancing, Pearl and I have thought about launching the World’s First Prettiest Parrot Contest, but it would be a short contest since we both already agree about who the winner is.
This leaves us free to admire other talented hookbills doing their respective thing. And also to point out that Snowball is very high up on our “favorite parrots” list because his work raises money for the charity that took him in as a rescue bird, Bird Lovers Only.
Book purchases also help Bird Lovers Only keep rescuing and caring for more parrots. Pearl and I highly recommend you buy this book. 🙂
Visit Bird Lovers Only: http://birdloversonly.org/
