Brian Wilson: bringing parrot cheer to Ground Zero

A New York City firefighter gets up close and personal with a few residents of the Wilson Parrot Foundation.

BRIAN WILSON just wanted a glimpse of the place where so many of his firefighting brethren fell on Sept. 11. Instead, he and his birds stayed half the night, bringing grins to the faces of weary heroes who were still toiling at Ground Zero in April.

Wilson, whose nonprofit Wilson Parrot Foundation saves orphaned parrots, was wrapping up a day of soliciting funds with 10 of his birds at a New Jersey animal fair when someone mentioned that New York's collapsed World Trade Center was just 15 miles away.

Although a four-hour drive back home to Maryland still lay ahead, Wilson decided he had to go. A retired firefighter himself, he had known some of the New York firemen who died in the terrorist attack, and he wanted to pay his respects to his "brothers."

"My intention was to go and spend a few minutes saying some prayers for all the firemen and everyone else who died there," he says.

Sad-faced rescuers
Wilson arrived in lower Manhattan at 6:30 p.m. In the waning light, he used binoculars to make out the activities in the crater of ruined buildings beyond the barricades.

What he saw were sad-faced rescuers performing the seemingly endless task of searching for human remains.

"One group goes through the big piles [of rubbish]. Then another crew searches it again. Piece by piece, they look for every particle," recalls Wilson.

Makeshift walkways allow workers to continue the around-the-clock cleanup effort at the World Trade Center site.

Nearby EMS personnel noticed the fire department tags on Wilson's van and asked him where he was from. After chatting with them for a while, Wilson had an idea. Could he take his birds inside the barricades and cheer up the workers as they emerged from "the pit"?

Barricade sentries allowed Wilson to drive his van through. He parked at Firehouse 10, a small station that had been located across the street from the South Tower.

Damaged but not destroyed in the attack, Firehouse 10 was one of the first to respond on Sept. 11. It lost half a dozen firemen and all of its emergency vehicles. It now serves as a triage center for rescuers, who continue to work around the clock.

"What you got in there?"
The firehouse captain who welcomed Wilson heard squawks coming from the back of the closed van.

"He opened one of the doors and said, 'What you got in there?'" remembers Wilson.

At first, personnel asked if Wilson could place a few of the colorful parrots on a nearby wall for rescuers to admire, but he feared for the birds' safety. Besides, such an activity seemed a little inappropriate at what had become a memorial site.

It was decided that Wilson would bring all the parrots inside the station and the firefighters would enter a few at a time to meet them. Better yet, Wilson could take pictures and give each fireman a souvenir of his encounter with the friendly birds, who also perform tricks.

For the next five hours, firefighters and other personnel working at the site streamed into Firehouse 10 to pose with parrots.

"I stood them against the door and said, 'Come on, put your arms out like a ballerina. Come on, you’re feminine.' They laughed their heads off. Then I’d load them up with parrots.

"I put Amazons or African greys on their shoulder, macaws on their arms, a Goffin’s cockatoo on their collar like a tie, and a Senegal on their hip like a pocket watch. I put either a Mollocan cockatoo or scarlet macaw on top of their fire helmet like a hat."

Parrot rescuer Brian Wilson wears some of the trained birds who accompany him to animal events around the country.

Rubbing shoulders with macaws, cockatoos and other exotic birds was a special treat for the firemen, most of whom had never owned a parrot. Many wanted to know how much they owed Wilson for the experience.

"I told them, 'Nothing. Just put this picture in your pocket and when you go back down in the pit and you feel down and depressed, take it out and look at it and smile and know you’re a true 'parrothead'."

Tired but happy
Between picture-taking shifts, Wilson walked around the dusty, acrid-smelling ruins and "cried my eyes out." But each time another group arrived to be photographed, he couldn't help but brighten at the prospect of bringing the exhausted workers a few minutes of lightheartedness.

When it was all over, Wilson had used 5 1/2 rolls of film and snapped more than 50 pictures. He left New York at 1 a.m. for the long drive back home tired but happy.

"They came out of the pit with a frown," says Wilson, who was injured in an auto accident seven years ago and now lives on donations and party fees his performing birds command. "I made them smile."

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