Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am the companion of a 12-year-old blue & gold macaw who came to live with us when she was five months old. Reading this book as my macaw's "siginificant other," I was at first appalled, then horrified and finally infuriated by the book and its author. Where to begin? Let's start with Nancy Ellis-Bell's foolish decision to allow this one-legged "rescue bird" to have free flight in the chilly "rain forests" of far Northern California, which ultimately led to its death. This outcome was almost inevitable from the day the author let "Sarah" fly out of her house to the day Sarah died from exposure to cold, rainy weather with temperatures verging on freezing because she was unable to make her way back to safety from the 80-foot heights of a fir/conifer canopy surrounding Ms. Ellis-Bell's home. The author's decision to let this native of the tropical rain forests of South America "be a bird" in the hostile, late-winter climate of Northern California's coastal range bordered on criminal negligence, in my opinion. Our macaw has always been clipped, and I would never consider giving her flight. There is simply too much risk involved: She could easily get lost or, more likely, one of the many red-shouldered hawks that live around here would quickly pick her off. Ms. Ellis-Bell justified her decision on the falacious assertion that macaws who can't exercise their wings by flying succumb to "wasting macaw disease," which she describes as a buildup of the "enzyme that in the wild allows [macaws] to beat their wings and stay airborne ... to deadly levels in a caged bird, literally emulsifying its muscles." In all my years of macaw companionship, I'd never read about this threat or heard any vet talk about it, especially not as a hazard of not allowing a macaw to fly. So I looked it up on the Internet. It took me all of about 15 seconds of a Google search to find numerous references to it, and every one of them says this ailment is viral in its origin. In other words, it has nothing to do with whether the bird is allowed to fly. Its real name is proventicular dilatation disease, or PDD. According to the Avian Health Network's Website, this disease "can affect and is fatal in captive and free-ranging birds." In other words, free-flying birds are just as likely to get it as caged birds. Ms. Ellis-Bell's book is chock full of misinformation like this. For example, again in justification of letting Sarah fly so that she would not succumb to PDD, the author asserts that the "optimal age" of a free-flighted bird is "nearly eighty years," as opposed to caged birds who "will likely die by the time they are ten or fifteen" if they are not allowed to extend their wings. In fact, the probable life span of macaws in the wild is more like 25-30 years before they succumb to inevitable disease, accidents or predators. It's the domesticated macaws that most often live into their 80s and beyond. The author also makes repeated references to Winston Churchill's blue & gold macaw. Curious about this, I "Googled" "Winston Churchill's macaw" and learned -- again within seconds -- that Sir Winston never owned a blue & gold macaw. My source was a BBC story that debunked this myth back in 2004. Ms. Ellis-Bell's book was published in 2008. Fact-check, anyone? Finally, well before I became horrified and infuriated in my reading, I was appalled by the way the author let this poor bird run amok and dominate her household, destroying some her best furniture in the process, while never attempting to set boundaries for the parrot or even trying to handle her. You cannot become a good human companion to a macaw without first establishing firmly in its mind that you are the boss. This takes a lot of patience, time and work. No one should ever acquire one of these big, colorful and wonderful creatures -- even ones that have been hand-raised from birth -- without understanding this. And no one should refer to The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog as a guide to responsible macaw ownership.