Vietnam veteran Stanley Smith feeds a piece of fruit to one of the three Amazon parrots housed at Serenity Park Sanctuary in Los Angeles.

MATT SIMMONS is not your typical parrot lover. The Navy veteran and ex-con didn’t think he even liked birds until he met Joey, a friendly 22-year-old Amazon.

"I thought it would be like going to work at a chicken farm - just squawking and pooping," said the 34-year-old. "I thought, 'I want nothing to do with this.' Then Joey climbed off a branch and on to my shoulder and didn't bite me."

Simmons and Joey the parrot are part of a unique experiment in occupational therapy, one that appears to be working.

Simmons is a resident at New Directions, a drug and alcohol treatment program for homeless veterans located at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Brentwood, Calif. Joey is one of 16 homeless parrots housed at Serenity Park Sanctuary, a new, one-of-a-kind avian sanctuary and compensated work therapy program on VA grounds. Simmons and a handful of other veteran servicemen and women enrolled in New Directions care for the parrots as a part of their treatment.

The idea for Serenity Park was hatched by psychologist Loren Lindner, an adjunct professor at Santa Monica College who served as clinical director of New Directions until recently.

In 1999, the same year that Lindner accepted her New Directions position, she and avian rehabilitator Jeannie White co-founded Earth Angel, a rescue organization for cockatoos. Lindner placed her own two cockatoos at the Ojai, Calif., facility because her new responsibilities at New Directions did not allow her to spend as much time with them as before.

Psychologist Lorin Lindner with her cockatoo, Sammy, a resident of Serenity Park Sanctuary.

For five years, Lindner made the trip north from her home in Los Angeles to Ojai once a week to see and care for her birds and others placed at Earth Angel. “I never missed a weekend,” she says.

Lindner started bringing some of her New Directions patients to Earth Angel to give them a break from the VA program. The veterans were transformed by the experience of caring for the parrots, she says.

“These were tough guys, Marines. One named Willie said, 'I don’t want nothin' to do with no birds.' Then one of the cockatoos climbed up on him and put her head on his lap. She looked up at him and said, 'Hello, I love you,' and Willie fell in love."

Lindner realized then that the therapies she had been trying to use to help the veterans understand others’ feelings - empathy building, sensitivity training, anger management and compassion - might be better taught directly by caring for the birds.

“The birds really help these guys get out of themselves," she says. "Some lost their wife or family. The light had gone from their face. The parrots bring out a pure emotion of love. You see it in their eyes when they are with the birds."

It was clear that the parrots were benefitting, too, as they developed trusting relationships with their caretakers. Lindner decided to make the experience a form of "trans-species" therapy and soon was soliciting the Veteran’s Administration for some of the unused land on the grounds.

The VA donated a dilapidated basketball court with broken asphalt for redevelopment and agreed to let Lindner build a parrot sanctuary as part of New Directions' existing work therapy program.

Six aviaries shaded by eucalyptus trees house the therapy parrots.

Lindner and a host of volunteers, including an architect who provided his time and designs pro bono, transformed the barren slab into an urban avian oasis that complements the facility's 20-acre park run by vets as part of the Horticulture Therapy Program. It's the first bird rescue on government property in the U.S.

In May, 75 people gathered to attend the official opening celebration of Serenity Park. Mark Bittner, the once-homeless author of the book, "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," and subject of a documentary by the same name, talked about life with wild parrots.

"[Parrots] will change your life without your wanting them to," he said. "I was basically homeless and had no friends. Then I had twenty-four that I had to be very careful and smart with," he said.

Also on hand was actor and environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr., who urged people to do more for parrots at home and in the wild. "It’s simply the right thing to do for them and for us. How many rivets can you lose from an airplane before you lose the web of life?"

A common bond
Pets and people sometimes share a sad common bond: homelessness. There are hundreds of avian rescue organizations across the U.S., such as The Gabriel Foundation in Colorado and Foster Parrots in Boston, that are filled to capacity with cast-off pet birds, with more being brought in every week by their owners.

The New Directions choir, made up of recovering veterans, perform at the grand opening of Serenity Park Sanctuary.

According to New Directions, Los Angeles has the largest population of homeless military veterans in the nation, with an estimated 20,000 - 11 percent - living on the streets.

New Directions was founded in 1992 by three formerly homeless veterans to provide food, shelter, and rehabilitation to other veterans who were homeless and chemically dependent. The program now helps more than a thousand vets a year with a variety of services including job training and placement, legal help, financial assistance, counseling, remedial education and long-term drug and alcohol treatment.

Veterans leave New Directions with a job, housing, a savings account, computer skills, renewed self-confidence and the support of mentors and peers. But in between entering and release, recovery can be an uphill battle. Many suffer from more than one problem such as substance abuse, mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as chronic medical problems.

"[They] often need to make a gradual transition reintegrating back into the work force," says Lindner. "Working in a relatively stress-free environment for a specified period of time is imperative for them."

Enter the parrots of Serenity Park Sanctuary.

So far, the feathered therapists include Lindner’s cockatoo, Sammy, a military macaw named Porky, a blue-and-gold macaw named Sherman, three Amazons that go by Joey, Ruby and Magdalena, who has no tail, and nine Indian ringnecks.

Mark Bittner, author of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, speaks to the gathering.

Lindner is planning to bring more birds into the spacious aviaries, which have automated misters, live bamboo for the birds to chew, toys, and fruit and spray millet strategically placed along rope and tree branch perches. The ringnecks have a small tented box to retreat into.

Helpful and fun
Veteran Stanley Smith is recovering from alcohol and drug abuse at New Directions. He grew up on a farm and trained dogs as sentries to guard B-52 bombers in Vietnam. He also had a parakeet and Amazon as pets. Now in the program for eight months, when he became eligible for work therapy he requested to work at Serenity Park.

"It’s good therapy," he says. "You can tell a dog to come here and it’ll come but a bird won’t just because you want it to. It will teach you patience, empathy and sympathy. Doing this work serves a dual purpose: I’m taking care of my problem and enjoying it too!"

The veterans are helping the birds recover, too, says Lindner. Some pet birds that have been neglected or mistreated are thought to suffer from their own form of PTSD. They often develop behavioral problems such as screaming, aggression or feather plucking.

"Most people who have parrots forget how emotionally complex they are," says Lindner. "Birds have a social brain. It's cruel and unusual punishment for them to live ... in cages without anyone giving that a second thought. But it’s like solitary confinement for humans. It’s one of the worst things that can be done to them."

The new parrot sanctuary complements the Veteran's Garden, where flowers and vegetables are grown by New Directions residents.

Halting the downward spiral
Matt Simmons can relate. After a short stint in the Navy, he spent several years addicted to drugs and 22 months in prison for violent behavior, including a year in solitary confinement.

"I know what it’s like to be locked in a 6-foot-by-9-foot-cell with no interaction with other people," he said.

Released from prison, he was about to commit a robbery so he could buy more drugs when he decided to enter New Directions instead.

Once Simmons personally got to know the birds he was caring for, he recognized similarities he shared with them that helped him accept and understand his own feelings and behavior. Lindner's cockatoo Sammy "rips her feathers out and is as neurotic as I am," he quipped.

Matt Simmons shares his experiences with Serenity Park grand opening attendees.

But now, Simmons says that he is healing himself by practicing the principles he has been taught.

"I got a foundation at New Directions and we talked about spiritual principles, but I hadn’t been in a position to use that or share it with anyone. I come and work with the birds and I put things into action. They are very honest. I know what it’s like now to be spiritually equal to another creature. I still have trouble being completely honest and straightforward with people, but not with the birds. When I tell the birds I’m doing something, I do it."

"There was little threat of love when I entered the VA," mused Simmons, "but things change. They [birds] changed the way I think. And I’m very, very grateful. I can’t say that enough."

Author's note: Though veterans are paid to care for the parrots through the New Directions work therapy program, the Serenity Park Sanctuary depends on tax-deductible donations to thrive. To contribute, visit Lindner’s non-profit organization, the Association of Parrot C.A.R.E., at www.parrotcare.org.

Mira Tweti is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and numerous magazines. Two of her exposés, "Plenty to Squawk About" and "Parrots in Peril," garnered Genesis awards from the United States Humane Society. Her first book on parrots will be published by Viking next year.

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