By T.L. Petersen
Staff Writer
It's easy to tell if you've dialed correctly when calling Nell Locken's Fir Street home.
Just listen to the background chatter.
Tweets, chirps, whistles, bells, and maybe even a chorus of "Old McDonald" are going on all bird talk.
Welcome to Nell's bird house.
Don't ask for a count.
Locken has a few birds in her living room, a few more along the edges of the dining room, and at least four small rooms off the dining room and a hallway all devoted to birds parrots, cockatiels, lovebirds and more.
"I hate birds," Locken's husband, Laverne, admits with a small grin, as Nell counts.
But after decades together, many of them with birds, Laverne just leaves the birds to Nell. Since Laverne is a little hard of hearing, it's not a big deal.
As their children and grandchildren come and go, the common response to all the birds is a shrug of the shoulders and a roll of the eyes.
"Watch out for the tunnel of doom," a teenage granddaughter advises visitors.
That tunnel is a narrow passage between bird cages, where Serge, a large Amazon parrot, likes to observe the comings and goings of the household.
And where he sometimes likes to lean out and snap his thick, wickedly hooked beak at bare legs, dangling fingers or bared shoulders.
Locken also warns visitors about Serge. But she explains he's just being protective of "Baby," the attention-grabbing Amazon parrot sitting near him.
That 23-year-old bird quickly proves she's the ham of the Locken kingdom, repeating phrases, preening for a camera's flashing red lights, twisting her neck over her back and generally acting the diva she knows she is.
On this day, after a basic count, Locken thinks she has "about 40" birds calling her house home.
And she is maid, cook, caregiver, nurse, human playmate and guard for each one.
A gas company meter reader for many years, Locken said she spent years "seeing sad cases of neglect with animals."
She worked with Help Pets and People, and Planned Pethood, and eventually helped put together the infrastructure that would become the Blue Mountain Humane Society.
But before that, Locken found her true love in the animal kingdom birds.
"I had my first yellow cockatiel in the 1970s," she said.
"Like potato chips it's hard to stop with just one bird."
But Locken is quick to say she doesn't actually own her birds. They own her.
Look around her birds and it's easy for any animal-lover to make that determination. There is absolutely no smell of birds or bird waste in Locken's home, nor are there stray feathers or dirty newsprint birdcage liners around.
Food dishes are sparkling clean, as are cages and perches.
A heat lamp placed to warm an injured bird call Locken's home a bit of a bird hospital, too is checked time and again. Can't be too warm, or too cold.
"I've gone in debt to support them, have given up friends and family for them, and am happier than any time in my whole life," Locken says.
Locken provides a word-of-mouth service to area bird lovers.
She provides a rescue of sorts. She takes in unwanted and neglected birds and works to rehome birds that then come with clean bills of health and a back-up support system for the new owners.
"I have never felt that my home was the most perfect home for birds," Locken says. "My happiest moments are when I find wonderful homes for the needy birds that come my way."
Birds, Locken says with insistence, are not good pets for people who are unwilling to spend time, money and energy caring for them.
Birds, she explains, are flock animals and need the company and attention of others if not birds, then their humans.
With murmurs to "my little darlings," Locken explains that living in a smoking home, or a home with cats or ferrets, or a chilly home, can lead to a bird's death.
The bird resting under the heat lamp? Under its wing there's a healing ferret bite.
In the living room corner is a quiet, large, gorgeous white cockatoo with his head tucked near his side, oblivious to what's going on around him.
"He's brain-damaged," Locken explains. "My guess is he might have been thrown across a room."
And people need to pause and really think before getting a pet bird, Locken says. Birds may be serious long-term pets.
The smaller the bird, generally speaking, the shorter the bird's life.
But that's relative. Finches, parakeets, lovebirds and cockatiels probably won't last 20 years. Conures and quakers typically live 20 to 25 years. And with parrots, "you're starting to talk about decades," says Cathie Falck, a friend of Locken's and fellow bird lover. Big macaws, she says, have been recorded living nearly 100 years. And there's a guy on an Internet bird lover's site with a 42-year-old Amazon.
And those bird cages?
Locken and Falck only use the cages generally as night-time safety lodges for the birds, who spend their days climbing over, under, around and about the variety of toys in miniature gymnasiums the two women have created for the birds' entertainment.
And it's easy to see the need.
In Locken's parrot room, a window frame shows the damage parrot beaks can wreak. Locken's parrots have enough ropes, bells, shiny shapes and teething ring-like toys to be the envy of most children.
Between raising her own birds by hand, healing wounded birds, taking in and rehoming birds, Locken has little time for other hobbies.
Her world is all about birds.
"Personal success, for me, means birds placed in good loving homes with wonderful owners," she says. "I have only had to take two birds back due to neglect and the failure of those people to abide by the rules of adoption. I have had many birds returned as they did not work out.
"That's OK. There's another home just around the corner."
