YOU COULD SAY Mira Tweti has a higher tolerance for bird poop than most people who own parrots. For that matter, you could say she's a better sport than the average lorikeet owner. (You know the lorikeet, right? Which squirts its liquid droppings up to four feet away?) Now, Tweti's good-natured acceptance of the messy ways of birds is paying off.

It all started one morning as Tweti watched her rainbow lorikeet, ZaZu, "buzzing around the kitchen from one place to another as lories are wont to do," and pooping "five times in five minutes."

"I thought, 'You poop here, there and everywhere,'" remembers Tweti. And just like that, the idea for a book was born. "It made me laugh and that night I started to compose a story about a parrot, a lorikeet, like him who did just that."

Tweti, an investigative journalist who has written for ParrotChronicles.com, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and other publications, soon realized that the somewhat silly idea of a loose-boweled bird was connected to much broader, environmental issues.

"When parrots poop in our homes it makes a mess," she notes. "On furniture, clothes. And it's one of the main reasons they're relegated to cages and people get tired of having them. I can't count how many people say, 'they're too messy.' And they're not just referring to poop, but to the way parrots shred and fling every edible morsel in their food bowls, and worse. Lories especially like to turn their bowls over and spill water all over for fun."

Tweti decided to turn this fact of bird ownership into a children's book on parrots' place in the ecosystem - and how humans not only unwittingly thwart birds' natural lives, but hurt the planet in the process.

"The thing is, in the wild all that poop is important to the ecosystem. It feeds a myriad of creatures and helps to fertilize the forest floor." Because parrots are 'seed predators,' when they fly they become an excellent dispersal unit for seeds that otherwise wouldn't travel long distances, Tweti further notes. "So their poop, which is a source of problems in captivity, is missed by flora and fauna in the wild who depend on it. This is one reason it's important to keep birds in their trees and why the international trade in wild birds is not only devastating parrot populations but creates collateral damage to other species as well."

Here, There and Everywhere, an illustrated 48-page hardcover book for 4- to 12-year-olds costing $19.95, tells the tale of Sreeeeeeeet, a young rainbow lorikeet captured for the pet trade only to endure an unhappy existence in a New York city apartment. That is, until his enlightened owners decide to return him to the wild in New Guinea. Signed first-edition copies including a bonus 8-inch-by-8-inch poster of birds preening are available now from Tweti at ParrotPress.org and can be shipped to arrive before Christmas. The book must be advance ordered elsewhere, including Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and other major booksellers, for delivery in January, its official publication date.

Tweti traveled a winding road in getting her book, which she calls "the first parrot welfare children's book," to press. She had to establish her own publishing interest, Parrot Press, and raise her own funds to publish the first 1,000 copies. There were other hurdles. She decided to walk away from her first printer after deciding she could not in good conscience allow the use of paper she discovered was made from virgin Indonesian rainforest, the very types of trees in which her main character nested.

"Today, many books printed in the United States and Asia for the American market use Indonesian rainforest trees, the kind parrots depend on to live, or other limited natural resources," she states in the book's acknowledgment.

Determined not to contribute to deforestation, Tweti chose another paper that is made of 10 percent flax fiber, 40 percent recycled post consumer waste and 50 percent sustainably harvested trees certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. This paper came from Living Tree Paper, owned by Carolyn Moran and her partner, actor and longtime hemp and sustainable-living guru Woody Harrelson.

As Tweti's effort picked up steam, she attracted the attention of other conservation heavyweights, collecting endorsements from Jane Goodall, who wrote the introduction to the book, and the Humane Society of the United States. The final coup was snagging a national distribution that is putting the book in more than 900 bookstores. Recently, at a launch party in Santa Monica, actors Beau Bridges and Adam Arkin and hip-hop singer Mystic each read from the book.

Not bad for a little book whose main character is a homesick lorikeet.

The launch party helped raise funds for two local parrot rescues, Parrots First and Lily Sanctuary. Both rescues are in the Parrot Press Donation Program, which Tweti conceived as a way to give a percentage of every book sold to parrot rescues and conservation.

"I now have 24 rescues located across the U.S. in the program," says Tweti. "All joined since inception five weeks ago! I purposely fought to get the book out in time for Christmas so they could use it as a revenue stream -- from sales generated at holiday fundraisers, on their Web sites, in emailings, etc. Now some rescues have made more money on the book than Lisa (the illustrator) and I will!"

Here, There and Everywhere closes another circle for Tweti. It reflects a dream she once had for her first bird, a lorikeet named Mango. "I dreamed of somehow taking him home back to New Guinea, where I deduced from research his parents were originally captured. My dream to return Mango was borne of the realization that he was missing his natural life, the one meant for him, and waiting for him."

Unfortunately, there was no way Mango could return to his ancestral home. The Indonesian Parrot Project, a nonprofit that rehabilitates and repatriates native birds that are confiscated from smugglers before they leave the country, did not yet exist. Tweti considered taking Mango to Australia and releasing him with a lorikeet flock there, "but bringing a parrot into as well as out of its native Australia can get you arrested," so she quickly dropped that idea. In the end, she realized Mango was not a good repatriation candidate because he was too tame. "His life had been too compromised by captivity by then."

Nonetheless, Here, There and Everywhere's plot line is realistic, says Tweti, because Sreeeeeeeet was born in the wild and not caged for very long.

"One expert in Brazil, Pedro Lima, who has re-released over 10,000 parrots and other birds native to the coastal areas of Salvador de Bahia with an almost 100 percent success rate, says the imperative is that the parrot be raised with conspecifics in the nest," notes Tweti. "Otherwise, it cannot be successfully released into the wild as an adult. Why? He has no idea, but that's what his decades of experience have shown."

Tweti made sure Sreeeeeeeet met Lima's criteria by making him a wild raised, wild-caught lorikeet. She also made sure to mention that he satisfied the medical requirements of his release country of New Guinea, which is what a repatriated bird would have to do.

Here, There and Everywhere helps ease Tweti's regret over her own birds' captive lives. She could not help Mango, now gone, or ZaZu, her current lorikeet. But she believes her children's tale might someday help prevent more birds like them from being denied the wild life they were meant to live.

"With Here, There and Everywhere, I've brought Mango home," she says.