It's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for the 1:3 BR we've experienced around here lately. (BR stands for bite ratio, which I just made up to describe bites per encounter. Currently I'd peg mine and Louie's at one nip per three encounters.)

Hey, I empathize. I'd be cranky too if every couple of months someone who claimed to be a friend attacked with nail clippers. So Louie fights back in the only way she knows how. I just don't know how many more unscarred areas of my body I have to offer.

I wonder how many hundreds of pages of bird behavior books and screensful of Web pages, including this site's, have been devoted to biting. They all say something different. Show your bird who's boss, some say. Don't dominate, admonish others. Ignore them, engage them, use a perching stick, don't rely on a crutch. And no matter what we try, unless we have remarkably mellow birds - or never interact with them at all - a lot of us get bitten on a fairly regular basis.

"Yeah, for some reason parrots have to bite me. That's their job. I don't know why that is. They've nearly torn my nose off. I have a deep-seated respect for parrots. As gifted as I am with all other wildlife, parrots have this uncanny desire to kill me. I'm not sure why, but they're like my kryptonite!"

Those are the collected parrot-related quotes of the late great Steve Irwin, who preferred wrestling pythons to handling a hyacinth macaw.

Irwin detractor Germaine Greer added her two cents in The Guardian after he died: "The only creatures he could not dominate were parrots...Parrots are a lot smarter than crocodiles."

Of course if Irwin approached parrots in the same way he did crocs, it's no wonder they reacted by attempting to give him a free rhinoplasty. But what about us doting owners? Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve so much gnashing of the beak.

After eight years of running cold water over open gashes and explaining the bruises on my shoulders I've noticed Louie has three types of bites. My favorite (sheesh, I can't believe I'm ranking them) is the open beak pinch. Damage: momentary indentation on the skin. Trigger: I'm between her and something she wants.

The next worst is the nip, usually inflicted when I'm putting her on my shoulder. Damage: These nasty little pinches leave tiny bruises all over my arms. Trigger: She'd rather be somewhere else.

The final type of bite draws blood and is often accompanied by screaming - mine. Damage: pain, definite scarring (so far no stitches). Trigger: removing her from a "nest"; restraining her for grooming.

In the time we've had her, Louie has given me a level three bite four or five times. The first one surprised me so much - particularly since Louie seemed to have no intention of letting go - that I yanked my arm away and let loose a blood-curdling scream that brought Paul running. The blood and damage to my wrist were minimal but it was still the worst bite I had ever received in my life. I felt faint.

After that, I began following the rule of "foot up," a little safety precaution I invented for our interactions with Louie. I'd noticed that once Louie offered a foot, it was almost always safe to pick her up no matter where she was, whether it was cowering under a dark bed or glowering down at us from a high perch. The raised foot, as far as I was concerned, was a promise: "yes, okay, go ahead and pick me up, I'm cool with it, I'll behave."

Of course, Louie breaks this gentle-bird's agreement on a regular basis. Most recently she chewed on my right wrist for trying to pull her out of the washing machine. She still dives into piles of dirty clothes whenever the lid is open and my back is turned. This day she meekly held up a foot to lure me into the machine, then once I began hauling her out she delivered a savage bite. Much screaming and swearing. Paul came running.

While Louie guiltily scuttled off like a big blue-and-gold cockroach, I cradled my right arm and watched my bleeding wrist swell up and turn several shades of pink and blue. Louie served time for the rest of the day. It was late that evening before I could stand the sight of her again.

"What are we going to do?" asked Paul. We had tried using the perching stick to retrieve Louie, but sometimes she refused even that.

We know part of the problem is Louie's unfettered freedom. When she's out of the cage she's allowed to roam at will. But trying to cut back on her access to all the inviting little cubbyholes and chew-rugs she finds on her travels is like trying to stuff the big blue genie back in the bottle. Make that one very p-o'd genie.

In the meantime, now's as good a time as any to clip those nails. The relationship can't get much more strained. Sometimes the best thing to do is just get the hard part over with. Then we can have our sweetie pie back.

With a little help from his owner, a parakeet has written a tell-all memoir called My Name is Pipsqueak! What's Your Name? My True Story. Cheri McAleese, who launched Pipsqueak Press to give voice to her talkative blue budgie, is an animal lover who lives in New Jersey.

Hear Pipsqueak's raspy but clear speaking voice in the excerpted chapter Murphy. The book is available for $17.95 ($24.95 CD included) at www.mynameispipsqueak.com.

Hello? Hello?
I saw a Google ad for parrot ringtones. A squawking phone? Why not? It sounded like a must-have for someone like me so I followed the link. An hour later I still hadn't found a ringtone I liked well enough to buy, but I did have fun trying them all out - and there are a few.

First you have to weed out the imposters. One site, for instance, offers a ringtone called Parrot Calls, but when you click on the preview button all you hear is the hoot-hoooot of an owl. (Somebody at MSN Mobile needs to consult their Audubon field guide. This ringtone was probably recorded by the same foley artists who work on every movie in which a hawk screeches when a pigeon flies overhead.)

Rediff Mobile offers a blue Amazon macaw, whatever that is. (A hyacinth macaw? A blue-and-gold macaw?) At least it sounded like a macaw, if one with a case of laryngitis. I found a buzzard ringtone (okay, so I wandered off topic a bit) that sounded like a hawk; a human doing a very poor impersonation of a rooster; and a goose that sounded like a goose, which sounded like someone blowing his nose.

Starpulse.com offers a strangled-sounding parakeet and a conure screech. They also have a ringtone called McCaw, which made me think of a parrot in a Stetson for some reason. But this one turned out to be my favorite. It's one of those marathon macaw screams, a long uninterrupted cry that lasts through several inhales and exhales as if the poor bird is being murdered. I'd like my phone to sound like that.

Alas, when I tried to purchase McCaw, it was not among the bird calls actually available for sale.

But that's okay. During my meanderings I came across Halfbakery.com, a site that proposes having an International Answer the Phone Like a Parrot Day. Especially in light of the dearth of decent parrot ringtones, wouldn't your day be brightened by the sound of someone on the other end beginning a conversation with, "Braaaawwwk"?

I couldn't find the date suggested for this celebration, but I think it's an excellent idea whose time has come. And perhaps gone. As one of the postings noted, "Done. I just frightened someone from the University of Birmingham, who was phoning to request an inter-library loan." I guess being on the receiving end of International Answer the Phone Like a Parrot Day can be just as difficult as being a participant.

So I guess I'm stuck with the boring ringtone that came with my phone, the same one that thousands of other lazy cell phone owners have not bothered changing. You know the one; you hear it all the time, at the airport, in the movie line, at restaurants - the ringtone the T-Rex swallows in Jurassic Park. Every time my phone rings the hair rises on the back of my neck. I quickly glance around for large prehistoric lizards, then I realize I own one. Dinosaurs preceded Archaeopteryx preceded modern-day birds, such as Louie.

Well, what do you know? I have a parrot ringtone after all.

The longing kicked into high gear last week when a neighbor from up the street stopped by to chat with some of us out on the front lawn. She was walking one dog and toting another inside a small carrier. When we asked what it was, she set the carrier down and unzipped the mesh flap. Out wandered a six-week-old teacup chihuahua. She was fostering it for the Alameda Humane Society, she said, and hoped to keep it.

I picked up the wriggling puppy and tried to hold it on my lap. It gnawed on my watchband with its needle-sharp baby teeth.

I've known two chihuahuas personally. Neither had a sense of humor. One was my Great Aunt Abby's dog, a pudgy matron whose bug eyes watered constantly. The sound of her nails clicking across the kitchen linoleum early every morning set me on edge as I lay in bed, waiting for my parents to get up. Trixie was making her rounds. She might be old and fat and shiver pathetically in her little round bed by the fireplace, but I didn't dare try to pet her. I didn't like passing her in the hallway. She bit.

So did my best friend's chihuahua Bambi. We liked to mess with Bambi's fierce loyalty to his family by pretending that I was attacking Billie. We would sit side by side on the couch, Bambi in Billie's lap, and I would grab Billie's arm and ragdoll it while Billie screamed, "Help!" Bambi would hurl himself at me, snarling like a pit bull with rabies, but before he could do any serious damage Billie would pull him back onto her lap, where she would pet him and praise him for being so brave. Then we would do it all over again. It wasn't long, for some reason, before the sight of me made Bambi tremble and curl his lip.

A few years ago we met some nice people who own three fat chihuahuas who wag their tails at strangers. That gave me hope and so, despite my past experiences with this prickliest of the smallest breeds, or perhaps because of them, I want to try again. I think.

Louie, our blue-and-gold macaw, is always the big question mark when it comes to adding another animal to the household. I think she could take a dog the size of a chihuahua. It is better to have a carnivore who fears birds than the other way around. But could they coexist happily? It's so hard to imagine we're afraid to try.

I would love to get another bird. I'd love for it to be a parakeet. But a) parakeets have been overbred to die way too young and b) Louie would gladly dispatch one much sooner than its natural lifespan if given half the chance. She is wickedly jealous. A bigger bird would be safer - but we don't want another big bird.

And so we are stuck for the time being, swooning over lap dogs. Tempted to buy a horse. A bird-rescue mailing list I subscribe to recently cross-posted a desperate message, begging readers to send ransom money to save 94 Canadian horses doomed to the slaughterhouse Sept. 5 unless someone buys them. Seems they had been abandoned by the previous owner and the next-door neighbor who had adopted them had run out of horse feed and couldn't think of anything more constructive to do with them. Three hundred dollars for the foals, $500 for yearlings, mares by the pound.

I looked at the PhotoBucket pictures of the mares and their long-legged foals. "Come and look at these," I said to Paul. "No," he said. "Please. Let's buy a horse. So it will go to a horse sanctuary in the meantime. At least it will be our horse. Look at the pictures." "No." "When we buy our place out in the country, we'll already have a horse. We can just pop over to Nebraska and pick it up." "I don't want to look."

An Internet search revealed a more recent, followup message on another mailing list that said all 94 horses had been spoken for. I sent the poster a message anyway. "If you have any leftover horses, let me know."

I'm almost certain Louie would get along with one.

Every session with Louie leaves us fantasizing about inventing some type of restraining device, an avian strait jacket if you will, that safely immobilizes the beak and wings so you can groom without sweating bullets over the prospect of losing control of your bird and a finger in the bargain. I would pay major bucks for such a device.

Mind you, I've had birds that stood patiently while I cut their nails. But Louie will never be that kind of bird, no matter how many times we introduce her to friendly Mr. Towel. Nope; Paul has to grab her around the neck in the vet-approved grip (snug enough to immobilize her head, without choking her), while I trim eight nails in under three minutes, the approximate length of time I have before Paul can't hold on any longer. And believe me, it's not easy prying apart the clinched toes of a thrashing macaw.

A couple of months ago we once again found ourselves facing The Overgrown Beak. Then, just when we thought a trip to the vet's was inevitable, Louie broke off the tip. Where or how we had no idea; we were just grateful she had found a way.

A few weeks later Paul was cleaning out the dishwasher's trap, that well in the bottom that collects food and melted Tupperware lids, when he found a strange object. Multiple wash and dry cycles had given it a weathered look, like a tiny piece of petrified wood. After examining it at some length, we realized it was the long-lost tip of Louie's beak. Ewwwww.

Faithful readers of the Diary will recall that just last year Louie groomed her beak on the agitator of our washing machine, which subsequently stopped working and had to be replaced with a shiny brand-new washing machine. So I guess this is how it's going to be. If the only way Louie can trim her beak is on major appliances, what's next for us? A new refrigerator? Stove? We have a coffeemaker I'm not particularly fond of. Is there anything you would like Louie to "accidentally" break for you? An old dryer, perhaps?

So far the dishwasher is holding up. But the really scary thing? I think I'd rather replace every appliance in the house than make Louie face the dremel again.

Judging by the results of our last poll (which asked what's the biggest challenge of owning a bird), Paul and I are pretty much alone in our dread of the clippers. Of 235 respondents, only one person said grooming was a major hassle. Screaming and biting earned the top votes, each garnering a little over 20 percent, followed by feather plucking (16 percent), cleaning up messes (13 percent), vet bills (11 percent), and incompatibility with another pet (2 percent). Fifteen percent of you were not bothered by anything enough to list it.

Louie rarely squawks, so we're ahead of the game in the annoying vocalizations department. But not so for many of you. So in these waning weeks of summer, let's look a little more closely at screaming, one of your biggest problems as bird owners. How do you handle it? Share your thoughts in the latest poll.

Welcome new advertiser!
Here's something that might be fun for the bird-loving computer-savvy child in your life. Lucy the talking bird is an eBook with flipping pages and narration that tells the story of a friendly African grey.

Your Birds photo contest winners!
It's that time again: we have two new winners in the Your Birds photo contest. For our September-October champs, go here.

Kim Sallaway nabs first place and $50 of bird supplies for his terrific photo of Yvonne Hendrix's Alexandrine parakeet, Lanakai. Scott Ensign takes second-place and a $25 gift certificate for catching his cockatiel, Spot, in a big yawn. Many thanks to our contest sponsor, Drs. Foster & Smith, for supplying the prizes! Be sure to check out the dog, cat, aquarium and other pet supplies the company offers as well.

I'm not naive. I know socks vanish for no reason into an alternate universe never to be seen again, leaving behind useless singles that take up space in the sock drawer for years to come. Oh, we try to play matchmaker so the socks left behind can feel whole again, but socks rarely mate twice. They are known to pair for life. So we wait and watch, hoping that someday, somehow, the prodigal sock will return. We've all seen the ones who didn't make it, lying dirty and bedraggled on the side of the road. Very sad.

But usually my socks wait at least a couple of months before making a break for it. This time, almost half my new socks had fled within a couple of weeks, a record. I couldn't understand how that many could have so quickly fallen between the washer and dryer or static hitched their way out on other clothes. Not even the latest cotton microfibers, while incredibly stylish, were that crafty. It was downright creepy.

Naturally I blamed Paul, who has never stolen my clothes to wear or even as a way to annoy me. "Why would I be taking your socks?" he asked.

"Maybe you accidentally put them in your drawer." I rummaged around his collection of size 12s with holes in the toes but found nothing.

In the meantime, socks continued to make good their getaway. "I'm going to have to buy new socks again!" I complained, because I hate all forms of clothes shopping.

Last week Louie disappeared downstairs. When this happens, we usually find her hiding behind a door or in the kneehole of Paul's desk, her feathers all bunched up with attitude because we've invaded her secret space. This time we couldn't find her anywhere.

"Louie!" I called, checking the closets.

"Louie!" yelled Paul, cupping his hand as if calling Lassie in from the barn.

Finally I got down on my hands and knees and checked under the beds. I found Louie under the guest bed raking her beak against an object I couldn't make out.

"Out!" I commanded. "Louie, out!"

We are very proud of the "out" command in our house. Louie responds to no other order as well as "Out". It means: "Drop what you're doing and come and stand in front of me" and works incredibly well as a way to remove her from tight spaces where we don't want to stick a hand.

Louie sheepishly emerged, festooned with dust bunnies. "What are you doing under there?" I asked.

I picked her up and put her on top of the bed out of the way while I crawled underneath and recovered the mystery object. I brought out in my hand six rumpled socks, all mine, all missing until now.

It seems unlikely they all fell behind the bed where Louie happened to find them. But the only other explanation is that she hoarded them, enjoying her own soft little microfiber nest of stolen gym socks while I went barefoot.

We've never, ever, seen Louie carry anything in her beak from Point A to Point B. She's never collected so much as a rare stamp, much less a full wardrobe. What does it all mean?

I think it means we have a klepto on our hands, and that from now on we're going to have be a lot more careful about where we drop our underwear.

Welcome, new advertisers!
It's an online store. It's a message board. It's both! It's www.theperchstore.net (and www.theperch.net), stocked to the brim with products for your bird, plus a place to hang out with other parrot owners. From artwork to water bottles, it's got it all. Check it out.

Do you live between Lafayette and Placerville, California? Feathers and Scales offers pet sitting for birds, reptiles and other exotics in the area.

How hot is it? It's so hot, the fish in my aquarium are sweating. It's so hot, we're considering spending a few days in Death Valley to cool off.

In between bouts of cursing at the AC and mopping your brow, don't forget to make sure your birds have plenty to drink. Keep their cages out of sunny windows and spritz with cool, clean water to keep them comfortable. Make sure the mister bottle has not been used for any other purpose such as pesticides. Mark it for bird use only! (Paul is always stealing mine to clean the shower with a bleach solution.)

It was 98 degrees in San Francisco yesterday, not quite the record 105 set in 1988 but blistering enough. In my father-in-law's driveway it was 122. (All the concrete I guess.) While we escaped to the beach where it was 40 degrees cooler, poor Louie sat in her cage, stuck in a stuffy house. Just how stuffy we didn't realize until we returned to find the indoor temperature hovering at 90, despite all the windows we had left open. And that was at 9 o'clock at night. Although her room is the coolest in the house, I wished we'd left a fan running.

I've never understood a bird's heating and cooling system. Although I'm sure the physics behind it are sound, what a bird does with its feathers makes absolutely no sense to me.

When cold, a bird fluffs the feathers out, away from the body. How exactly does that trap warmth? Wouldn't that allow heat to escape, like unzipping your parka?

When a bird needs to cool off, it does just the opposite, which seems just as illogical to me. When sweating bullets (if it could sweat), a bird clamps down its feathers. Wouldn't that just make it hotter?

The open-beak panting, the wings held out from the body, those seem like sensible heat-fighting tactics. Louie was using both when we got home.

I knew how hot she was when she submitted to the mister without protest.

Louie ordinarily finds the mister undignified and unwelcome, but last night she stood on my arm soaking up each blast until she was covered with a sheen of droplets. I sat her down in front of the fan in the living room, where her body, if not her face, registered relief. She shook out her feathers and preened.

Today I'm going to mist her again, throw a couple of ice cubes in the fish tank, and turn the box fan on high. Stay cool!

The first window perch was a crude open box constructed of four flat sheets of plastic joined by metal L brackets. A second, improved prototype was made from a single sheet of 3/16" acrylic that folded down like a cardboard carton.

But this perch, too, was still a far cry from what John envisioned as a final product. The plastic was still too thick and heavy and the square corners were hard to clean. The boxy shape invited chewing and did not allow units to nest for shipping or stacking on store shelves. On top of everything else, it would be expensive to make. The prototype had cost almost $300 in materials.

John spent several weeks rethinking the shape. He passed his sketches on to an artist friend named Mike Stack. Stack came up with the third and final prototype. This window seat for birds had smooth, elegantly curved sides. It was easy to wash and could be stacked to save space. It was also 80 percent less expensive to manufacture.

John and his wife, Aleta, sent the window seat to their friend Susan for a final test run. She said she loved it but that John and Aleta needed to make a larger size for African greys and Amazons. John decided that while they were at it, he would make a smaller version, too. He scaled the drawings up and down so that the medium and large units would use twice as much plastic as the one before it.

The Redfords began shopping for a manufacturer. As the cost estimates came trickling in, they realized that they were not going to be able to sell the window perch for less than $100 as they had hoped, not if they stuck to their decision to manufacture inside the United States and use stainless steel hardware. The smallest window perch would have to be priced at $99.95.

John selected a manufacturer in Kansas City who was an old college buddy. The company offered one of the world's largest thermoforming operations and the window perch would be made in its design and research department.

There were a few glitches along the way. At one point the manufacturer told John the large window perch couldn't be made, whereupon John showed them how they could adapt their machinery. But by this time, the Redfords' dream was fast becoming a reality. Only six months after John began tinkering with the second prototype, the final product's mold was done. All that remained was coming up with a name and putting up a Web site.

John spent a week brainstorming product names. The name had to somehow combine the idea of birds and windows. It could not be any longer than seven letters so it would fit on an Illinois license plate, and a corresponding toll-free number had to be available.

He settled on "Wingdow". The first Wingdow sold in early November, less than a year after the Redfords decided to go commercial.

That was four years ago, and the Wingdow line has since expanded to gyms that can be attached to windows.

The Redfords have not been made rich by their invention. "As I rode home from the plastic shop that made the first rectangular folded prototype," recalls John, "I ran some rough calculations in my head. Allowing for the costs for tooling, advertising, and everything else, I figured if I sold one thousand Wingdows, I might net out $5 each. I realized I could make more money asking people if they wanted fries with that."

At first this realization depressed John, but then "a flash hit me," he says. "If I did sell a thousand Wingdows, I would be making a thousand birds happy. That's some major karma!"

Today, the Redfords say they get their satisfaction from happy customers, including an African grey named Griffin whose human, Rich, sends e-mails saying how happy the bird is with the perch. When he wants to perch at the window, Griffin has learned to say "go see Wingdow".

Says John, "Then I feel that all the struggle of starting a small business based on discretionary spending in this economy is okay after all."

To see the Wingdow window perch and gyms, go to www.wingdow.com.

Is there an interesting story behind your bird product? E-mail me at invention@parrotchronicles.com.

Clipping "depends"
In our last poll, we asked whether a pet bird's wings should be clipped so it can't fly. The majority - 60 percent - said it depended on the situation - whether training was involved, how safe the bird's environment was, how watchful the owner planned to be, and so on. Twenty-four percent believed strongly that wings should always be clipped. A common observation was that flighted birds could "crash into walls, mirrors or windows in their panic injuring or even killing themselves. Worse yet, they can fly out an open door or window never to be seen again."

The fewest percentage - 14 percent - said pet birds should never be clipped under any circumstances. Yet these respondents left the greatest number of comments, many of them strongly worded. Said one, "Wing clipping is hideous and barbaric," and another, "I'll clip my bird's wings as soon as you cut your dog's front legs off." Most, however, simply championed the natural state. "Birds are birds and they are meant to fly." Another echoed this sentiment: "If you want to have a walking animal, get a dog, cat, ferret or rabbit."

The current poll asks what you find the biggest challenge of having a parrot for a pet. Here's your chance to share frustrations and offer suggestions.

Taking her is a pain, but so is leaving her. Fortunately, car trips are always easier than we think they will be. Paul is always surprised Louie is willing to stroll right into the same carrier that has transported her to the vet so many times.

"Okay, I'm going to try to put Louie in her carrier now," he said at the beginning of one trip.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Just open the door to the carrier, open the door to her cage, and stand back."

The second her cage door swung open Louie quickly made her way to the floor, barked once appreciatively at the entrance of the carrier and went inside. She peered out the bars, looking very pleased.

"She likes being behind bars. Louie, you jailbird," said Paul.

At the house in Jackson, where we had come to spend the Memorial Day weekend, we set Louie up in the breakfast nook as usual. Her vacation cage, which stays at the house, is a large cockatiel cage way too small for her, and Louie looks ridiculously uncomfortable stuffed inside it, her tail and head barely clearing. So we try not to keep her cooped up too much, electing instead to leave her on the top of the cage, even when we go out for the evening.

Luckily, she sticks close to the cage, rarely wandering - she's too intimidated by the new surroundings. By the time she feels comfortable enough to explore the house and cause trouble, it's usually time to go home.

When we take her outside, however, it's back into the cramped cage.

"I don't especially relish the idea of jumping in the pool to rescue her," Paul said one morning as I sat on the deck holding her on my lap, my thumb firmly pinning one of her toes as a precaution. "Or she could fly into the stream behind the garden."

"That's the least of our worries," I said. "See that?" I pointed up at the property's largest oak tree. There on the top branch, perhaps 50 feet up, two silhouettes stood guard. Periodically one bird would wheel high over the yard, the shape of the wings immediately giving it away as a predator. Each time a hawk returned to the nest high up in the oak tree we could hear chicks begging. I was surprised to hear they sounded like baby pigeons.

I shuddered. "They sound cute, but we don't want them having Louie for lunch."

Once again we discussed whether Louie could fight her way out of a hawk attack.

"I think a hawk would release her once she bit him," said Paul. "You know she would bite back."

"Yes, I think she would too. But who knows? She might give up. Or she might not be able to do enough damage to discourage the hawk. Or it could come back for her.

"Anyway, if she did get away from us, I couldn't help you chase after her," I said, holding up my foot. I'd sprained my ankle in step aerobics class.

I wrapped an arm around Louie and hobbled back inside. Sometimes it's a real drag having a pet most other animals find edible.

"Duck your head," I coached Louie as I threaded her through the door of the cockatiel cage once again. Paul carried the cage down to the pool so Louie could watch us swim. She seemed content - not pacing like before - and we had peace of mind.

The next day we loaded Louie back into the truck and drove home. None of our worries - that Louie would escape in a strange town, tangle with a hawk or destroy someone else's house - had come to pass.

And once again I was glad we had gone to the trouble of bringing her with us. How could we possibly have a good time knowing she was back home staring out a window hour after hour, day after day, waiting for our return? It feels as if we've left a family member behind, which we have. When Louie comes with us, it's the perfect vacation, really. It feels complete. And that feels good.

She sat on my lap, trembling. "Here, perch," I said, and I placed her on the glove compartment release so she could see the road. "Where are we going, Louie?" I petted her reassuringly. "We aren't in Alameda anymore, are we?" I pointed. "Look at the cows, Louie! Wow, look at the tractor-trailer rig!"

Louie relieved herself on Paul's factory-condition front passenger-side floor mat, just missing my foot.

"Louie is ready for her carrier," I said.

Paul pulled over at a gas station so I could unbuckle my seat belt and crawl into the back seat. I opened the door to Louie's large carrier, one for dogs we had bought to accommodate her tail, and put her inside. She happily chewed the newspaper lining the bottom.

"Well, that worked out well," Paul said.

"Hello!" Louie addressed her mirror.

"Now's she happy."

I applied the first of many Kleenexes to the floormat. "Don't you want to clean this up now, while we're stopped?" I asked Paul, who was pulling back onto the two-lane highway.

After three years, Paul's truck still smelled new and more important to him, looked new both inside and out. Ordinarily a soiling of this magnitude would call for much emergency scrubbing and swearing and soap and water and vacuuming.

"Nah, I'll get it later." Amazing. Twenty minutes into our vacation and Paul was already so relaxed he didn't care that a stain was setting as we spoke.

I was actually in a pretty good mood, too, despite Louie spoiling my fantasy of bonding with her on the road. I could have waited out her nervousness but I wasn't in the mood to play maid. I was on vacation, too. Besides, she seemed perfectly content clinging to the carrier door the rest of the way. I gave up trying to interact with her after she tried to bite me through the bars.

Louie likes to play that game and I know better, but I always try anyway. "Hi, Lou-lou," I'll croon. "How are you doing in there?" I'll stick a finger through the bars, beckoning her over for a head scratch, and the sweet-tempered macaw I put into the carrier responds by striking like a cobra.

When I reflexively jerk back my hand, swearing in spite of myself, Louie's eyes gleam with what can only be described as a sweetly lethal mixture of merriment and murderous intent. I remember that look from somewhere. Oh, yes. Jurassic Park. Velociraptors.

Our destination was Jackson, a nice little town in the heart of California's gold country that is equal parts idyllic burg, tourist trap and hog hangout. At our friends' house, we found Louie's "guest cage" stored in the office above the garage. We brought Louie in, lugging her carrier by the molded edges so she wouldn't bite our hands through the bars.

Inside we released Louie from the carrier and placed her on top of the cage so she could stretch her wings. I reached up to pet her head, which she now bowed sweetly for me.

Her eyelids drooped with pleasure as I scratched her small bony cranium. "We're so happy to have you with us, Louie," I said, and I actually meant it.

Next week: Three unremarkable days, a good thing.

For dogs the car is clearly a rolling hypersensory blowout. Have you ever witnessed a dog crouching on the floorboard or yowling miserably? No way! Dog + convertible = par-tay! No matter how much of a Walter Mitty type your pooch is on the end of a leash, in the car he's hanging his head out the window snorting the smorgasbord of smells rushing by at 70 miles an hour while hurling insults at the loser dogs he passes. A satisfactory olfactory and social experience all rolled into one. Dogs like long road trips way more than I do.

The least happy travelers are undoubtedly cats, the aforementioned huggers of floorboards and demonic howlers. When they're not hiding under the bucket seats, they're throwing up or shredding the leather upholstery. It was so much fun taking kitty to the vet in the days before pet carriers.

Louie, our blue-and-gold macaw, likes the car. The gentle movement and passing scenery fascinate her. She spreads her wings and her eyes grow big and excited. The pupils pin down to points and then flash, big and dark, again. Pin and flash, pin and flash. She's not afraid, I'm proud to say. It is a miracle to her, the car. She sees things that never walk by her window at home. It's fast and thrilling and she feels lucky just to be alive.

Of course, I'm assuming. But if a bird can be enthusiastic, Louie exudes loads of it whenever she goes someplace in the car.

We're going to the country for Memorial Day weekend, a friend's vacation home about three hours from here. It will be Louie's second time there, and she'll have her own cage waiting for her, which our friends keep in the garage for us.

I would love to not have to keep Louie cooped up in a carrier the whole way there, but I've heard too many sad stories about birds killed in auto accidents because they weren't restrained.

Maybe for just a few miles down the road, before I lock her up and she spends the rest of the trip clinging to the carrier door, I'll let her look out the window and get a glimpse of what the world is all about.

Next week: Louie in the country.

Googling "suction cup," John ordered three samples of every brand he could find that measured at least two and a half inches in diameter. His only other requirement: the suction cup had to be made in the United States. John and his wife, Aleta, had decided early on that no matter what the cost, neither parts nor manufacturing would be outsourced. The Wingdow would be U.S.A. made right down to the washers or not made at all.

Before long, the first suction cup samples began arriving in the mail in padded envelopes. Over the next four months, John would receive 80 cups in all, which he kept in a large drawer in his home office desk.

All he needed now was a reliable way to test them. John's friend Jerry, a jack-of-all-trades inventor who had master's degrees in physics and electrical engineering and the better part of a medical degree, suggested a fish scale.

First, each cup was affixed to a clean spot on the four-pane window in John's office. Then the scale was hooked to the cup and John tugged on the other end.

One by one, less worthy cups popped off the window, unable to withstand the pressure. Finally all that remained in the drawer was a suction cup that wholesaled for $4, the most expensive of the batch.

Touted as "the world's best suction cup," the industrial grade cup was 70 percent stronger than others and could withstand freezing temperatures and up to 120 degree F. It boasted a thick cross-section designed to reduce strain and stress. A UV-resistant compound prevented yellowing and brittleness. According to the literature, the cup could hold its shape and be used over and over again. The manufacturer held 17 patents. It sounded like the suction cup the Redfords had been waiting for. It was.

John lightly pressed the cup to the window and tugged to make sure it was secure. Then he attached the scale and pulled. And pulled. The cup refused to budge. The window, however, cracked. The fish scale read 20 pounds, a record.

John Redford had found the suction cup that would keep the Wingdow and the birds perched on it safely attached to any window.

Next week: sculptors and engineers weigh in.

After being given a clean bill of health following a lumpectomy two years earlier, Aleta's mother had had a seizure. An MRI revealed a brain tumor, suggesting the cancer had returned and spread. After setting up additional tests for her mother at a nearby hospital, Aleta returned to Chicago for three days to see her husband, John, and pick up some more clothes.

On Sept. 10, 2001, Aleta went back to New Jersey, this time by train so she could bring with her a personal item of comfort: her 30-pound Celtic harp.

On Sept. 11, Aleta drove her mother to the hospital to have a bone scan. Not long after they arrived, the hospital stopped admitting patients, at least ones who needed routine care. The staff had to get ready for an influx of terrorist victims.

On the same day, Aleta received the news that her mother's cancer had spread to her bones. She would not return home to Chicago for nine months.

Creativity fills the void
John and Aleta Redford, successful IT and product development consultants, respectively, had had a great year in 2000. But the tanking economy finally reached their professions in 2001 and work in the Chicago area dried up.

By the time Aleta left to take care of her mother, neither Redford had worked for months. Fortunately, they still had a nice cushion of savings. But with Aleta gone, John was lonely and bored, with too much time on his hands. He needed something to do.

Looking around the house, he realized that perhaps this was the time to focus on the Wingdow.

John had invented the Wingdow so his and Aleta's three small birds would have a safe place to sit and enjoy looking out the window. The contraption was somewhat crude - a square open box made of heavy Plexiglass and metal brackets - but it worked beautifully. The bird sat on a perch mounted inside the box, and the Plexiglass shield let it enjoy the view while preventing it from chewing on the window's molding or making a mess on the floor.

John had knocked together several Wingdows for their own use, and friends were always urging the Redfords to sell the Wingdow commercially. The problem was no one would want to buy a window seat for a bird that had to be screwed into the wood, scarring the window frame and becoming for all purposes a permanent attachment.

On the other hand, suction cups could be dicey. Friends with birds had reported problems with their suction-cup-equipped shower perches falling. At best, a falling perch was a nuisance that could permanently scare a bird away from using it again; at worst, it could result in serious injuries.

John knew that how the commercial Wingdow would attach to a window would be his biggest design hurdle. If it was to be suction cups, they would have to be strong, and they would have to be resistant to heat and light. They would have to last for years. He wasn't sure they existed.

John Redford sat down at his computer, went on the Internet, and rolled up his sleeves. He ordered samples of every suction cup he could find.

Next week: the Redford house becomes test site central.

This is the story of inventors John and Aleta Redford. In our first installment last week, Frank James (older brother of Jesse) and Cole Younger had just rescued the son of a prominent Independence, Mo., family from Civil War bandits. Fortunately for John Redford, the boy survived - to become Redford's great-grandfather.

One hundred years later, John Redford grew up in the 1950s and sixties, earned multiple advanced degrees, became an inventor and corporate consultant, and eventually husband of fellow consultant Aleta, who had never owned a bird.

"We're going to fix that," said John, who had had pet birds as a child growing up in Independence.

Christmas Eve 1997 Aleta came home to a darkened house and heard something, a bird sound. "And there was Pook, a Senegal, a phenomenal bird," she remembers. Four months later the couple acquired a blue-headed pionus. Eventually three canaries and a parrotlet joined the flock.

John wanted the house to be the birds' as much as it was his and Aleta's. "We both felt very badly about the birds not being in a natural environment," says Aleta. "We wanted to make their lives every bit as natural as possible."

One thing the couple noticed about their birds - and many of their friends' birds - was how drawn they were to windows. And how much happier and active they seemed to be when they were at the window catching rays and watching the world outside. "It seemed to us that they were just trying to recapture some of what they do in nature—which is spend a large part of their day atop trees, soaking up the sunlight and just looking around," says Aleta.

Unfortunately, Pook's love of window gazing was creating a problem. "He really, really loved his sunshine. He also liked to chew on our windows," says Aleta.

Early one Saturday John went over to Home Depot, dropped $150 for some generic sheet plastic and stainless hardware, and five hours later had installed a crudely built perch - an open acrylic box, really - on one of his office windows.

It was an instant hit. Although ordinarily not an early adopter, Pook the Senegal flew right to the perch and let out a loud "chireeeep!" in delight. Then the pionus, Sapphie, became interested enough in the window box to chase Pook away.

The next day John went back to Home Depot, shelled out another $150 for materials to build a second perch for another office window. This was followed a week later by window perches three and four for the birds' room.

The first few homemade perches were made of acrylic sheets joined by ugly metal corner brackets with pop rivets that soon cracked the plastic. They were not particularly pretty, but John and Aleta's birds loved them and spent a lot of time on them. Fellow bird lovers who came to visit admired the perches and urged John and Aleta to make them for others.

John and Aleta toyed with the idea of manufacturing their window perch commercially. They thought about it for the next five years. Then they brought home another canary, Lucero.

"The first time we let Lucero out of his cage, he flew directly to the window perch nearest his cage. His next stop was the window perch on the other side of the room, hidden by a large plant display. He must have been planning his flight from his cage by watching our parrots, Pook and Sapphie," says John. "From that point on, we knew it was some kind of cosmic duty to share this happiness with other birds."

John decided to call his window seat for birds "the Wingdow". John and Aleta were closer than ever to making their window perch a commercial product, but with their busy careers, it was difficult to find time to work on it. All that would change when Aleta had to leave home for what would turn out to be a very long time.

Next week: John gets to work.

If you believe in fate, we owe at least one unique product for birds to outlaws Frank James (Jesse's older brother) and Cole Younger.

In the 1860s, James and Younger ran with a radical group of Confederate sympathizers called the Bushwhackers, who fought in Missouri and Kansas against a band of Unionist guerilla fighters called the Jayhawkers. Both groups had unsavory elements who operated as bandits - and who used the Civil War as an excuse for robbery and murder.

On the outskirts of Independence, Mo., lived the Hobbs family, once wealthy landowners whose fortune, like many others', was decimated by the war. But the Jayhawkers didn't know that, and they tried to extort money from the family by threatening to hang their son.

James and Younger were out on a raid of their own when they came across the extortion attempt. They ran off the Jayhawkers and cut the boy down from the tree, saving his life.

The rescued boy went on to father a daughter named Bess, who dated - and eventually dumped - Harry Truman in the early 1900s (Harry must have been smitten, because he went on to marry another Bess).

But I digress.

Young Bess Hobbs met and married a man named Redford and had her own family, including a son who married and tragically died not long after fathering a son named John. Bess took over the job of raising her grandson in Independence, Mo., where young John was a frequent guest at the Truman home thanks to his grandmother's enduring friendship with Harry.

Surrounded by uncles who were carpenters and tinkerers, John was interested in how things worked from an early age. In his twenties he ran a custom auto body shop, started a company called Free Enterprise, which built hard tops for Jeeps, and earned a master's degree in statistics and probability theory.

John moved from Kansas City to Chicago in the mid-80s and joined the AC Nielsen Company (of Nielsen Television Ratings fame). There he met a young up-and-coming executive named Aleta, who at the time was one of only a handful of female vice presidents at Nielsen's parent company, Dun & Bradstreet.

Aleta had never owned a pet in her life. John had had pet birds as a child in Independence. "I'm going to get you a bird," John promised Aleta, when they were married.

Next week: Boredom is the mother of invention.

Welcome, new advertiser!
Here's something I bet you've never seen before: bird swings made of lamb's wool. That's just one of the unique hand-made creations you'll find at 8 beaks. Not only does proprietor Lisa Rizzo make really cool-looking swings out of a range of materials but she offers rattles your bird can hold in his foot and Kaboodles puffed corn kernel treats, among other interesting products. Check it out at 8beaks.com.

Your Birds winners for March-April 2006!
The great pictures of your birds keep pouring in. Just take a look at first and second place - and the long line of honorable mentions and first runner-ups - in our latest competition.

We're getting so many entries now, I would be most grateful for strict adherence to contest rules. Please send only one photograph per contest per family. Please send pictures in the JPEG format. And please e-mail entries, not links to a photo album.

A very special thanks to Parrotdise Perch for sponsoring the March-April 2006 first-place winner. Bren and Clive Hannan of Oakville, Ontario, pick up $50 in Parrotdise Perch merchandise for their picture of baby parrotlets. Karen Walsh of Sydney, Australia, receives an autographed copy of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, now out on DVD, for the second-place photo of her sun conure acting as a "head rest".

Keep those pictures coming!

Suitable for children three years and older, the Toob houses 12 two-inch-tall birds from around the world, including parrots, owls, toucans and flamingoes.

The packaging features this Safari Fact: "Macaws are the biggest tropical parrots, and can fly 35 miles an hour. They like to travel in pairs to favorite treetops, where they feast on fruits and nuts."

The Toob already has provided me with hours of good, clean parrot fun right here at my very own desk. Thanks, Laura!

Survey participants needed
Lori Gaskins, a veterinarian employed at University of California at Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, is conducting an Internet survey of bird owners. The goal is to determine what their bird's daily life consists of, and how this might influence the bird's health. Dr. Gaskins plans to make her analysis of the data public in an effort to improve pet birds' lives. To take the survey, go here.

Friendly parrot sought for party
Do you live near Halifax, Nova Scotia, and have a parrot who likes children? Bassie Feldman is hoping to find a friendly bird she can hire for a children's party to show the kids how "friendly and fun" parrots can be. If that describes your psittacine and he would like to earn a little extra cash to spend on bird treats, e-mail me at partybird@parrotchronicles.com and I'll pass your availability on to Bassie. The party takes place the evening of March 14.

Your New Year's resolutions
In the last ParrotChronicles.com's survey, we asked for your top parrot-related resolution. Most of you (32 percent) chose "spend more time with my bird". Next in popularity: improve my bird's diet, get another bird, bathe my bird more often, build an aviary, buy a new cage, take my bird in for a checkup, and, finally, clip my bird's wings.

Only one respondent chose clipping, which brings us to our new poll: should a pet bird's wings be clipped?

A nouveau wave of bird owners are committed to maintaining fully-feathered companions for a variety of reasons, including improved mental and physical health. On the other hand, my guess is the majority of owners still clip for safety reasons or fall into the gray area of clipping under some circumstances. Which are you?

"Nobody really expected even a hurricane to leave a city abandoned, thousands of hungry dogs and cats roaming the streets, hundreds of pet birds trapped in cages," says Athan, author of Parrots in Peril. "It had never happened here before, and nobody thought it could happen now, in this country. Local and national animal rescue organizations were not prepared to care for the tsunami of homeless four-legged pets, much less all the rest – the parrots, the hamsters, even snakes and pet tarantulas."

Of Powell and others who pitched in to save as many avian victims as possible, Athan has nothing but praise. "They stepped to the plate after the pitch had already been thrown."

Obstacles the rescuers faced not only included Rita, the hurricane that arrived on Katrina's heels, but an apparent attempt by the ever-helpful FEMA to shut down Powell's effort until they were convinced it was a legitimate not-for-profit operation.

Donna Powell's suburban home today still contains dozens of birds waiting to be reunited with their displaced owners. "The pace has slowed a little," says Powell, "but the days remain full. There is always something to do. Three hundred-plus birds were brought here and approximately 130 birds are still here, the majority of them cockatiels and budgies."

Powell also has "a few red rumps, conures and a rosella, all for whom we've identified owners. The conures, kept in the room where I keep my birds, are chatter boxes. Each has learned the other's vocabulary. I had the flu in the fall. Now, whenever I clear my throat, they both cough. The remaining umbrella cockatoo, whose owner we also found, is a sweet bird, lovable and funny.

"Then there is Rocky the bantam rooster, who roams the house and yard like cock of the walk. He loves to sunbathe – on his back – and eats bird seed from the floor and scratches in the cat litter box. (Thank goodness it is automatic.) He's fond of cheese cake.

"Every morning I get up at 3 or 4 a.m. to do a few things on the computer," Powell continues. "The quiet time passes too quickly. Hunting down owners who have relocated and finding the owners of birds that did not come with much information is time consuming. Weekends I usually drive into New Orleans to known addresses and leave contact information. Sometimes the owners have returned, or a neighbor has some information that is helpful. The past three weekends we have reunited birds with their owners and we've made contact with the owners of about 50 other birds. Another 20 or 30 came with some information that requires additional research. That leaves about 20 owners we might not be able to find. But optimism prevails."

The aviary Powell hoped volunteers would build to house her huge number of foster birds was never begun, despite initial offers to design and construct it. However, she's grateful for the work the 55 U.S. and Canadian volunteers who made the trek to her house accomplished. In addition, she has received donations of toys, cages, food, personal items and cash from all over the world, including New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

"Donations of medical supplies and medications were plentiful. Veterinarian response was remarkable," Powell says. As proof, of the 300 birds that passed through the Powell home, many of whom arrived emaciated, only five died.

If you would like to help Donna with the task of caring for and reuniting the remaining avian orphans of New Orleans with their owners, call her at (225) 273-3442 or email her at Donna@911ParrotAlert.com.