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The Current Transcript for July 13, 2014

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Your major league debut, as a 20 year old at Yankee Stadium, with the bases loaded and Alex Rodriguez the guy trying to get us out of this mess right here…

MIKE FINNERTY: Imagine as anxiety inducing situations go that one live in front of tens of thousands of fans is right up there. Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Roberto Osuna, steely enough to save the day for the Jays as his day job and steely enough to admit he's living with the kind of anxiety that can take him out of the game. Coming right up, anxiety and the athlete from one former pitcher ready to tell all. Also today, an operation to save hundreds of parrots.

SOUNDCLIP

Parrots would tell you everything you need to know. You just have to listen.

[Sound: Parrot screeches]

MF: Our documentary No Forever Home on a massive parrot rescue with a new sad postscript. I'm Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

How anxiety derailed former MLB pitcher Rick Ankiel's career

Guest: Rick Arkiel, Penny Werthner

SOUNDCLIP

It means a lot for me. Like I say, it was a dream, so, now me being here means everything.

MF: That's Roberto Osuna, the Toronto Blue Jays ace reliever in Miami this week where he was part of the American League's winning All-Star squad. And it was an extra special honor for Osuna this year because earlier this season he surprised fans and the entire sports world when he told his coaches he couldn't play because of anxiety. He talked to reporters through a translator last month.

SOUNDCLIP

I really do not know how to explain it. Just feel anxious. I feel like I'm lost a little bit right now. And I am just a little bit lost right now.

MF: Of course anxiety is nothing unusual but such openness about it from a professional athlete is. Rick Ankiel as another athlete who has struggled openly with anxiety. In 1999, he was baseball's number one pitching prospect touted as one of the future greats and then, he wasn't. Rick Ankiel’s new book is entitled The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips and the Pitch that Changed My Life. And Rick is in Jupiter Florida. Rick, hello.

RICK ARKIEL: How are you.

MF: A real pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for joining us. What did you think when you heard Blue Jays reliever there Roberto Osuna admit that he was struggling with anxiety?

RICK ARKIEL: Well first my heart goes out to him because I understand what that's like and how debilitating that can be. But secondly, I'm happy in the fact that he just came out and admitted it. I think as an athlete you know a lot of times you're taught to hide these emotions and it's really hard to come forward and come out with because now you're given the entire world ammunition against you. But the first step in trying to get past this is in admitting it and realizing that this is what it is it's not a mechanical issue it's not something else. But it is a mental thing that's going on. The anxiety in a lot of times you know you'll find with guys the more they talk about it the easier it is for them to get over it, because now it's not this secret that they're trying to hide, right? I got it out. I got it off my chest. Everybody knows about it. And here I am. This is what I'm dealing with. This is what I'm battling against and I'm going to go out here and give it everything I got.

MF: At what point did you have that realization where you thought it was good to speak about it publicly?

RICK ARKIEL: You know I didn't speak about it publicly when I was going through it at all, but I did speak about it with my internal friends and people that I kept in my inner circle. But it helped to talk about it really. I think at first when it first happened to me and I'm trying to, not only deny but I mean I wasn't even really sure what was going on. You know like I said as an athlete you're taught to never show your emotions to have this game face to be locked in, right? That's what everybody talks about, to be a gamer, and all of a sudden you have this anxiety thing going on. We're, you know, now you're not even out there competing. I mean you're fighting against yourself to even be able to throw strikes. It's not like you're in there playing cat mouse and moving the fast ball around from curveballs and sliders. You're not even able to play that game. So really you know the first time really the way that I've talked about it publicly hasn't been till I wrote the book in and now you know everything that's come with that. And here we are today.

MF: You call it the thing. Tell us about the thing.

RICK ARKIEL: Well the thing the yips the monster I mean I think “yips” is a term we commonly hear more in golf. But you know all of a sudden it takes your ability to do something one day and turns into the fact that you can't, you just can't do it the next day. I was a young man, a pitcher as you mentioned with talent as sky high. You know all of a sudden I go from being able to throw a fastball in the mid to upper 90s anywhere I want at any time to now looking down and not even being able to feel the ball in my hand, where your body in your brain just completely takes over. And even though you know exactly what you want to do your body and brain will not allow you to do it. It's just terrible frightening. It's the worst thing that I've ever been through.

MF: And it does seem to come down to a moment where things really got out of control in 2000 when the cardinals had had a great season, a regular season, and they were playing the Atlanta Braves for the National League Division Series. And you started a game that ended up changing your life. I want to play you some of the broadcast of that game.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Spectators cheering]

Back to the screen, and over to second base with [unintelligible] a wild pitch. It is a special. Another wild pitch, over the head of Hernandes and back to the [unintelligible]. Wow. To the screen and Kevin hits off the [unintelligible] and right back to Hernandes, so, Maddox didn't go anywhere. But Andrew Jones goes to second on the third wild Pitch of the inning. Maddux return, Andrew Jones [unintelligible]. [Sound: Audience cheer increases] And another wild one. And Maddux will score[unintelligible] He finally gets Maddux home.

MF: How vivid Rick is your memory of that?

RICK ARKIEL: Oh, it seems like it was yesterday. It's funny because when I hear that then I can put myself right back in that situation but on a day to day basis it really feels like it was another life, and it was. I mean it was, you know we're talking about something that happened almost 17 years ago. You know, like you said that game changed my entire life.

MF: Are you able to describe that for us for maybe some people would have had something similar happen to them but many won't have. Can you describe that moment?

RICK ARKIEL: Yeah. You know coming up to that game you know I was on top of the world and really felt like I was going to be one of the best pitchers ever. You know I had the talent to do that if I would have stayed healthy and etc. but we go into that game first aim goes good, second aim goes good, third aim I throw an inside fastball to a right handed hitter and I am left hander. And when I threw it to that side of the plate the ball cuts while I throw on that cuts and the catcher misses it, and it wasn't actually that bad of a pitch. But the catcher just missed it. In the back of my mind I thought: “Man. I just threw a wild pitch on national TV”. I didn't think much of it. I kept going but all of a sudden things just started to unravel. I bounced the curve I started bouncing balls off the screen to where the catcher wasn't even catching it, and walking guys. And it just turned into a mess and I'm out there everything that I had ever done up to that point to get myself back on track whether it was keep my weight back, lead with my hip lead with my elbow, all the cues that pitchers have to get themselves back on track. Nothing was working. I didn't even… I was so young that I didn't even understand what was going. I remember saying to the media after the game: “Oh this was a mechanical issue, this will never happen again.” But little did I know that was that would that would change the rest of my life.

MF: Were you, I mean in the moment during that, or did it feel out of body or what was a sensation?

RICK ARKIEL: Yeah. You know I was like I'd say I was so young I didn't even understand what was happening. I really didn't. Things started to speed up and go so fast that it was like I really didn't know what was happening. All I was thinking is “why is the ball not going where it's supposed to go? Why is why is the thing I've always been able to do… What's happening right now?” It was not until you know the next game. It happens again and then I thought Man something's wrong here. And then when I moved into the offseason to get ready for 2001 the next year, that's when I just started... I mean to even think about throwing out I would have anxiety and to go out on the field and try to do it and perform. There was the anxiety that would come, the nervousness was just debilitating. Not only could I feel it, but I could hear it coming. I mean I could hear the blood draining from behind my ears and then all of a sudden it was like my body would take over my heart's going 100 miles an hour. My mouth became so dry. I felt dehydrated like I was standing in a desert. It's the most awful and terrible terrible thing that there is anxiety itself.

MF: So those games, well, that game and those pictures changed your life.

RICK ARKIEL: Yeah 100 percent because I went from being, here I am like you said going to be the next Sandy Koufax or the first Rick Ankiel or whatever was going to become of me to: Now I'm out there not even able to compete. I'm not even able to throw strikes or be anywhere close to the person I was. I battled that for four years. Just every day trying to figure it out and wondering you know, “when am I going to just be me again”. That's all I want to do is go out there and be able to compete, like I've always done my entire life. And you know it robbed me of my pitching career. You know as a young man the mistake I guess I made was you know I thought baseball made me who I was. And you know now all of a sudden baseball is being taken away from me and I go from being the next greatest thing ever where I'm on every headline and every cover of every magazine, that I'm going to be the next greatest thing ever, to all of a sudden just some you know cautionary tale of what can happen and lost in the middle of nowhere. And the hardest thing about it is because this is anxiety or a mental injury I'll call it. You start looking around and you start looking at all the other people who have gone through this and start realizing there's many people who've never beaten this and never been able to come back. You know the difference in a physical injury would be. You know if somebody has an elbow surgery I can go talk to 10 other pitchers or people who've had it and they say I'll just hang in there do your rehab, you're going to get stronger, you come back, you'll probably be better than what you were. And you hear all those people who go through the physical injuries and talk about how hard that is and what a grind that is. Now imagine this injury where you start looking around and everybody who's gone through it is out of the game and never played again and never got over it. And you know to have all those things happen after you know one game and now into an offseason you start looking around. I mean it's scary. And having no idea of who you are, where you're going or what's going to happen.

MF: Rick we're going to listen for a few minutes to an expert in anxiety and sports. This is Penny Werthner. She is the Dean of the faculty of Kinesiology at University of Calgary, a Sports Psychologist. She spoke to us from Ottawa. Have a listen and we'll speak to you on the other side. Penny, hello.

PENNY WERTHNER: Hello.

MF: What was your reaction when Toronto Blue pitcher Roberto Osuna revealed so publicly that he was struggling that he was feeling a little bit lost and not even able to play?

PENNY WERTHNER: Well I guess I had two reactions. I mean one not surprised because high level sport is stressful and so to have anxiety around performance is pretty normal. So surprised and then I guess at the same time pleased that we're talking about these things a little bit more openly. We certainly are, in society and I think in sport, I mean if you haven't really competed at a high level in sport you don't understand. You think all of those athletes and players are you know they just know how to do this and it's inherent and the actual fact, you have to learn these skills in most cases. So, I'm not surprised.

MF: But how common is it in your experience for professional athletes? And, you know, Olympic great athletes struggle with anxiety.

PENNY WERTHNER: Well it's actually quite normal. I mean there is and you know I've worked you know I've been fortunate to work with lots of great young Canadian athletes who have won Olympic medals and there isn't one of those that I've worked with who hasn't you know thought what if this doesn't happen. You know all these years I've trained what if what if I don't get that medal that I so desperately want. So anxiety is really quite normal. I mean the pressure of competing in front of thousands and sometimes millions of people, if you count TV on top of that, you know it's a pretty big pressure cooker. And so you know I spend my time helping athletes develop skills that will manage that but it's not that they don't feel. It's how you then change that into something that's going to be productive because the sport is about physical execution of something and what we think and then what we feel is absolutely going to affect us physiologically. And that usually is to the detriment of performance, so it's how we understand that that connection between what we think and then how we actually execute a skill that's so important.

MF: What motivates most of the anxiety?

PENNY WERTHNER: Well, I think you know competitive sport is about winning and every athlete with a competitive streak wants to win. I mean they're out there trying to do that and if it's in a game against other people then you want to beat that other team or that other player. That's what really create settings from a sport perspective because it's unpredictable. I mean that's why we watch, right, but it is unpredictable and it's learning how to understand that part of the game and at the same time give great commitment to actually trying to win.

MF: So in your experience the anxiety is common what's not as common is people, athletes, willing to come forward and talk about it publicly to the media. Why do you think that is?

PENNY WERTHNER: Well I mean it's the same part with mental illness is. I think it's changing now that that individuals and you can see this now with the Blue Jays pitcher. I mean that they're now more willing to talk about it and I think that is a good thing because it does normalize it. But you know in the past no one wanted, everyone sort of wanted to pretend “Oh I'm fine”, you know and of course when you talk to athletes after they actually play well and they win they of course never say “well you know I was really scared before and I didn't know if I could do it”. I mean they rarely say that so we would we would have thought oh yeah it's a piece of cake doing this where it's actually not at all.

MF: Penny Werthner, thank you very much.

PENNY WERTHNER: You're very welcome.

MF: Penny Werthner, who is the dean of the faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. She was in Ottawa. Rick and kill in Jupiter, Florida. That exposure of your vulnerability when you were one of the hottest prospects in baseball, what was that like for you as a professional athlete with all the spotlight on you?

RICK ARKIEL: You mean when I first went through the wildness?

MF: Yeah.

RICK ARKIEL: It just crushed me, you know, because here I felt like I was on my way to being the best pitcher ever. That was certainly my goal, too. Now I'm so lost. I mean there was 35 cameras when I'm just trying to play catch and some days that made that impossible so.

MF: But there was no good that came from it either?

RICK ARKIEL: Like I said, first of all I didn't talk about it, right? So, I didn't come out and say hey I'm going through this anxiety issue. If anything, I was trying to hide it. So, the fact that all these cameras would never let me try to work on it or whatever. I mean I was lost, completely lost.

MF: How did other players respond to you when you spoke about it privately?

RICK ARKIEL: You know the thing is that you know a lot of teammates they want to help you. Right? They care about you. They want to put their arm around you. But another side of that is that this is such a taboo thing and it's not talked about. And the thing is if you didn't known me before this happened you just said man this will never happen to this kid. So the fact that it did happen to me and now all of a sudden this becomes real and it's in front of everybody else's face and now they got to think about it because they're seeing it happen. They understand that I can talk to them, so it works both ways where you have people that want to help you and other people who are…It's almost like they don't want to touch you because they feel like it's going to rub off.

MF: In 2007 you came back up from the minors to play with St. Louis not as a pitcher as an outfielder. How did that transition happen?

RICK ARKIEL: Well in ‘05 I came in and even, after pitching successfully in ’04, and came into spring training I had some injuries and some other stuff that was going on. But plus what it took for me mentally to throw strikes. It just wasn't what I wanted to do in life and I didn't feel that it was going to be worth it. And that's when I made the decision to stop pitching. And that was it. I actually went home and I'm sitting on the couch and about an hour later my agent Scott Boras calls and says hey are you ready to go play. And I remember saying to him: “Go play what? Is nobody listening to me? I just retired from pitching I'm done with that”. He's like: “No go be an outfielder”. And I told him, I said listen I've got to think about this. I just gave up baseball which has been the only dream I've ever wanted. And I don't know if I'm ready to fall back in love with it. So I hang up the phone about four or five hours go by and I'm just sitting on the couch and I'm trying to visualize what this is going to be like what it would take. And I get to a point where I visualize myself making it back to the big leagues as a position player and I see myself hitting a homerun and I let myself feel that. And once I got those emotions coming from me I immediately picked up the phone and called him back and said: “Hey, I'm in 100 percent.” He says: “Hey let me call the Cardinals”. Five minutes later, Walt Jocketty, who was the general manager of the Cardinals at the time, called me back and said: “Hey, if you want to give this a chance, we'll give you a shot to make it back as an outfielder”. And remember back in these days people didn't, organizations didn't let people do this. It wasn't an ordinary thing. So it was just kind of bizarre and just what a crazy 24 hours for me. I mean one time, you know, in one morning I'm leaving and I'm never going to play again. And the next morning I'm showing up telling my teammates “Hey I'm back and now I'm going to be an outfielder”. So bizarre 24 hours.

MF: And that first game back in the majors as an outfielder. Where was the thing?

RICK ARKIEL: Gone. Burried. To an extent, you know I tell people this all the time, even when I came back and pitched in ’04, it never goes away. It's always there it's just something you learn how to deal with. You know when I was going through those throwing issues as a pitcher, when I would get out past 100 feet I could trust that again for whatever reason. I could throw. I mean it just I knew where the ball was going but once I came into a shorter distance which the mound to home plate is 60 feet six inches. I had a tough time with those short distances. So as an outfielder you know, now all my throws were going to be long distances. I could trust it. So as a hitter, as an outfielder I didn't have any of those. I mean I would have nerve. I mean I could say I have, I'd be nervous before game or have a little bit of anxiety but normal nerves that you're going to have playing in a professional game. But not to the debilitating point where you don't even know how to compete.

MF: One more clip from your career and this time it's from August the 10th 2007, which was your first game back as an outfielder in the major leagues. The St. Louis Cardinals are playing the San Diego Padres and it's the seventh inning.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Spectators cheering]

[Unintelligible] Has a chance to lead the ball before it gets caught. [Sound: Louder cheering] A [unintelligible[ shot for Rick Arkiel back in the major leagues. Remarkable. [Unintelligible] Remarkable.

MF: How vivid is that memory?

RICK ARKIEL: Oh. It is incredible. I remember I was a, it was a two one pitch I was face and Doug [unintelligible] threw me a slider and I got barreled on it, and I'm looking at the ball and run into first I'm not sure it's going to be a homerun yet. And as soon as I realized there's going to be a homerun, I just had this flood of emotions explode in me, and you know really I felt like I floated around the bases on a magic carpet. And Tony La Russa who never shows emotion he's in the dugout jumping around, all my teammates are going crazy, the crowd was, the noise from the crowd and them stomping their feet and jumping around. It felt like an earthquake and I could feel the ground shaking as I came into the dugout. It was one of those magical moments that I'll never forget.

MF: Rick thanks for speaking to us.

RICK ARKIEL: Thank you guys have a great day.

MF: Rick Ankiel new book it's called The Phenomenon. He was in Jupiter, Florida. The CBC News is next. Then, the challenge of finding forever homes for our forgotten feathered friends. Our documentary on [unintelligible] homing parrots, hundreds of parrots, in our next half hour. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

ENCORE | 'Parrot listener' mends broken relationships between people and their birds

Guest: Jan Robson

MF: Hello I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MF: The World Parrot Refuge in Coombs British Columbia. It was supposed to be the last stop the final perch for exotic birds in need of a forever home. Hundreds of parrots, former pets and breeding birds were taken in by the sanctuary where they could fly, forage and be with their own kind until the end of their natural lives. And for some parrots, that can be up to 75 years. But last summer the World Parrot Refuge closed, leaving more than 600 birds in need of a home. It's a Herculean task and this great homing has shone light on the plight of these highly sociable and intelligent birds. In the wild habitat loss and the global pet trade have left more than a third of the parrot population threatened or endangered. Meanwhile the number of unwanted birds filling pet rescues and avian shelters continues to rise. The CBC's Suzanne Dufresne has been tracking the fallout from the World Parrot Refuge’s closure and in October she brought us the story of one Winnipeg woman working to mend the broken relationships between parrots and people. Her documentary is called No Forever Home.

SOUNDCLIP

MELANIE SHURA: She's come back and she's attached right to the husband physically, which is very worrisome.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: It's midday in Winnipeg and I'm on a house call with Melanie Shura. Melanie is a woman in her early fifties with short hair that defies a comb or a brush and a tattoo of a feather on her calf. People call Melanie when they don't know where else to turn. Today we're traveling in Mel’s van to the home of Jan and Gord. They called about Sydney. She recently moved back home and the adjustment is not going well.

MELANIE SHURA: This bird is screaming, has bitten Jan severely in my assessment. Flew at her and bit her in the ear, and then in a separate time flew at her and bit her in the back while she was trying to protect herself. This is of course not acceptable behaviour.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Melanie runs a charity called Avion Welfare Canada to help people like Jan and Gord and birds like Sydney. Dealing with these kinds of emergencies has earned Melanie the nickname, “the Parrot Listener.”

MELANIE SHURA: A parrot will tell you everything you need to know. You just have to listen. And if you can understand their body language, you're off to a great start. And here we are, it’s a beautiful peaceful neighbourhood from the outside.

[Sound: Dogs barking, Sydney screaming]

MELANIE SHURA: Well, I know there’s a Sydney in there and at least one dog.

JAN: Hello.

MELANIE SHURA: Good morning, Jan.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: A friendly looking couple meets us at the door. Their son is an adult now, but they have the tired look of new parents. They seem relieved to see her.

GORD: Welcome to our zoo.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Inside their open concept home, everything appears calm and pristine, and then.

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: We wince as a piercing scream reverberates off the walls. Jan and Gord’s two dogs break for the basement. Across the house in a huge cage off the kitchen, I spot her, a large white cockatoo.

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Quickly, Melanie takes action. She herds us into the hallway out of Sydney’s line of sight and explains why.

MELANIE SHURA: Only reinforce the behaviours you want to see more of. So when she does a nice polite “Hi,” I would respond to that.

JAN: Okay.

MELANIE SHURA: She's calling for contact. Contact calls are a necessary part of a parrot. As we said, they are always in touch with their flock, either visually or vocally, right?

JAN: Okay.

MELANIE SHURA: You’re 10 miles away but we can still hear you. [Chuckles] So the contact calls are really important for reassurance.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: A little history on how we got here. Five years ago, Jan and Gord sent Sydney to the World Parrot Refuge in BC. It was a sanctuary billed as a forever home for parrots. At the time, Jan and Gord were worried that Sydney's determination to pluck out her own feathers would lead to self-mutilation, a behaviour akin to cutting in humans. They hoped that free flight and a parrot flock of her own would stop Sydney from plucking. It did. But when they heard that the sanctuary in BC was closing, they wanted to do the right thing. They flew to the west coast and brought their bird back. Now they have to decide if they will keep Sydney or try to find new owners for her themselves. In our hallway hiding spot, I asked Jan how she's holding up.

JAN: I'm stressed out. I don't know what to do. Yeah, she's…

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

JAN: Sorry. I’m just concerned about her because we've taken her and brought her here and now have to get her back into a family setting with us as her flock, not her birds anymore. And so I'm hoping with Mel's help that we can do that for her. But in the same way, I'm not sure if we will be keeping her or not.

MELANIE SHURA: Why don’t you try a contact call? Just say, “Hi Sydney.”

GORD: Sydney. You a pretty bird?

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

GORD: That’s not very pretty.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: There’s a lot to consider. A parrot is a long term commitment. Cockatoos have an average lifespan of more than 30 years. A macaw can live well past 50. And parrots are highly intelligent. Imagine living with a two to five year old toddler for the rest of your life.

JAN: We sort of joked about it and said well, yeah, we’ll be 80 years old and she could outlive us and we could be in our older years and not be able to look after her. We’ll get our son—we’ll will her to our son, in a joking manner which really is—is really a, a very—

GORD: Selfish and unfair.

JAN: Yeah. Really selfish and unfair way to look at it because it’s a long time. It’s really truly unfair to have, I think, parrots as pets and I know a lot of people won't agree with that. I just think the life span they live and the ability for you to be able to be there for that total life span is something you really have to look at.

GORD: Lifetime commitment.

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

MELANIE SHURA: You’ve got to remember—and I know you guys are painfully aware of this—that she’s had free flight and full control over her environment for the past five years. She wants to go somewhere, she goes.

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

MELANIE SHURA: She wants a call back, she puts out a call, she gets a call back that’s very loud and appropriate in cockatoo world.

GORD: This is a bird that we’ve had for 17 years and we did the same things with it, you know, for 17 years.

MELANIE SHURA: Yeah.

GORD: But maybe it did 17 years’ worth of harm to it, I don’t know.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Jan and Gord are worried that Sydney will resort to her old ways now that she's back and resume her feather destructive behaviour. It's here that Melanie tells them something they didn't realize until now: touching a bird in the wrong places can trigger all kinds of problems.

MELANIE SHURA: We are going to be adapting how we handle her. There's not going to be any touching below the head. Maybe just head only. So any under her wings, back or tummy to a parrot, that translates pretty quickly into sexually based behaviours.

JAN: I like what she has to say. It gives us some hope, some tools to work with because we've kind of been treading water here.

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: There actually is a lot of debate about whether parrots should be kept as pets. Opponents argue that parrots belong in the wild where they can interact with their flock, explore new territory and fly each day. Keeping them caged in a home, they argue, can cause anxiety and distress in a bird. On the other hand, some in the bird community believe that captive bred parrots, raised and trained correctly, can form a healthy and intimate bond with their owners. It also has the added benefit breeders claim of slowing the trade in wild birds. Figuring out what to do with the more 600 birds who were housed at the World Parrot Refuge in BC has amplified that debate. But Mel's approach is pragmatic: if people are going to have parrots as pets, they need to know what they are doing. And sometimes that pragmatism means these birds end up in Melanie’s care. We’ll come back to Jan and Gord’s in a moment. But to understand the world of pet parrots, we need to visit Melanie’s home.

[Sound: Birds whistling]

MELANIE SHURA: Hi little [unintelligible]. Here’s some broccoli for you. I see you…

BIRD: I see you.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: You could describe Melanie’s bungalow as a halfway house for troubled and homeless parrots.

MELANIE SHURA: Hi Wee.

BIRD: Hello.

MELANIE SHURA: Hello. Want a carrot?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Cages line the walls of the dining room; wooden perches are parked in front of a giant window. There are colourful, noisy birds everywhere including in the parrot chewed cupboards in the kitchen where two birds have made their home.

MELANIE SHURA: We wash our dishes before we use them. He loves the measuring cups.

[Sound: Birds squeaking]

MELANIE SHURA: They're nesting. They are two males but they have a relationship. Cockatiel males, they are primary caregivers often. They sit on the eggs and they feed the babies.

[Sound: Birds talking]

MELANIE SHURA: We have a budgie named MacGyver who we believe is somewhere one and two years of age. Ah, we have Nelson and Cheeko. Nelson, we don't know how old he is.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Nelson and Cheeko are found cockatiels. There is Rosie, a peach-faced lovebird, her daughter Rork.

MELANIE SHURA: And Rork’s surprise hybrid baby, Pickles, who is now one.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: There are three blue and gold macaws: 22-year-old Sinbad, Kia is 26 years old and had eight homes before arriving at Mel’s.

MELANIE SHURA: She's my partner, my educating girl, she's my best friend. She loves the laundry. We're pretty tight, me and her.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: And a third named Andy. When he first came to live here, he was a bird in crisis. He screamed and lunged at Mel with a beak powerful enough to crush.

MELANIE SHURA: When he came in, he was so messed up that it took over 50 hours on a training stand for him to be able to step up on to my hand safely.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Squeaky is another cockatiel and his friend Monty is a blue-fronted Amazon. Oh and there's Melanie's family—her husband Paul and daughter Sophie. Despite the challenges of sharing your house with a flock of exotic birds, it's easy to see how you can fall in love with them.

[Sound: Monty singing]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Monty the blue-fronted amazon sings for Sophie.

SOPHIE: He came in a little over a year ago. Still looking for a home for him but while he's here, I work with him a lot. He's a little tricky with body language. See, it looks like he might try and lunge for me but he also keeps grabbing for me. So who really knows? He also likes to copy phone conversations and he can pick out little pieces of dialogue like filler words like ah...

MONTY: Ahh…

SOPHIE: Yeah. And he says bits of what he knows how to say. He nods his head, follows what everyone else does.

MELANIE SHURA: Who’s mama’s baby boy?

[Sound: Bird singing]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Paul and Sophie are used to the constant state of chaos.

MELANIE SHURA: Circumstances change from day to day. The phone will ring. Birds will come in. People will come in. There will be stories coming in by email. Some require emergency family consultation to say hey, look, can we help this one out or what are we thinking here?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Melanie has seen it all. People who hoard birds, birds who have been abandoned in empty buildings, birds who suffer from post-traumatic stress from abuse, and birds who are depressed when the owner they've bonded with, dies. And caring for these troubled creatures takes a great deal of patience and sensitivity so I suppose it’s not surprising that before working with birds full time, Mel was a psychiatric nurse. But in 2002, she got really sick. Pain and fatigue forced her out of the rigid hours of nursing and on to a new path that gave her more control over her days. For Melanie who has always owned parrots and loves dealing with challenging situations, it seemed like a natural fit.

MELANIE SHURA: I have all of these skills with people. I want to connect. I want to give something back. I want to be a role model for my daughter instead of her just seeing me in my pajamas all day and whatever. I want to do something. And I thought you know there's a real need here for these birds which are so sensitive and I can use my skills. You can have the most amazing relationships with them. They do want to be part of the flock. They adapt so well.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Melanie immersed herself in all things parrot. She enrolled at the Gabriel Foundation in Colorado. That's a respected education and adoption centre. She eventually started her own charity in Winnipeg and she reached out into the bird community to connect with owners in distress.

MELANIE SHURA: People who have had the experience of taking in this beautiful divine creature and within one or two years have destroyed and are asking me for help. The odd time that comes with a sincere confession from the people that if I can't help them, they would euthanize this bird. And in these cases, this is not a threat, “If you don't take my bird, I'm going to let it out the window.” I've had those as well. That's a different thing. This is people who have tried everything within their power to undo the damage that's been done and they are so desperate and they know darn well that if this bird goes to another home, somebody will beat this bird. They will harm it even farther. So in order to save the bird another 30, 40, 50, 60 years of abuse, they would sooner find a compassionate end to that bird’s life.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: At first, her MO was to simply remove parrots from a home where the owners were struggling to care for it.

MELANIE SHURA: I used to take in pretty much every bird and rehome them and I quickly realized that's not the answer. Shipping them off to a sanctuary somewhere is not the answer. People are just getting more birds.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: So Melanie changed her approach. Rather than remove birds from homes, she focuses on teaching people how to care for their birds.

MELANIE SHURA: They've purchased this creature. They've put resources out for it. Now they need to fix it or rehome it and now I will give people the tools to rehome and fix their birds. There’s no easy dump. You can't just go get a new one that is not going to bite and scream and pluck chew. That’s just not there. Let’s be realistic.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: But what is realistic is to teach parrots and their owners how to stop this behaviour. That's why we ended up here huddled together in Jan and Gord's hallway—

[Sound: Sydney screaming]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: --with a screaming bird in the adjacent room.

JAN: So we would wait until she gave an appropriate response right now?

MELANIE SHURA: Umm… yeah. I’m not responding to the scream for sure. That’s the hostage thing. That’s giving the lollipop after five days of not giving it.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: It feels like we are playing a game of musical chairs. When Sydney is quiet, we sit near her cage in the dining room. But as soon as she screams, we jump out of our seats and hide out of sight in the hallway. Eventually she realizes that a loud noise makes everyone leave the room and a quiet inside voice brings us all back.

MELANIE SHURA: You have to tell her what she should be doing.

GORD: Oh yeah. You are a pretty bird. You are. Yes. That’s more like it.

JAN: Yeah, we’ve got a pretty bird back.

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: It’s remarkable to witness the progress, even in this short visit.

MELANIE SHURA: --hear the message not only that screaming makes me leave.

[Sound: Sydney squawking]

JAN: But what was the reason why she was screaming?

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: By the time we are ready to leave, Jan, Gord and Sydney the cockatoo, all seem a lot calmer. Melanie goes through her list of priorities: placement of Sydney's cage near a window, crunchy diet, things to chew—very important—and the right amount of sleep, about 12 hours—another biggie. Melanie leaves Gord and Jan with a piece of advice which holds as much for stressed out parents of human babies as it does for parrot owners.

MELANIE SHURA: You need a date night.

JAN: Actually, we were going to go out last night.

GORD: Pets? Pet movie about the dogs?

MELANIE SHURA: How about something not pet-oriented?

[Sound: Laughter]

JAN: We’re still here, Sydney.

MELANIE SHURA: Okay, you take care.

JAN: Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

MELANIE SHURA: Get some rest, okay? I’ll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye Sydney.

[Sound: Door shut]

SUZANNE DUFRESNE: Melanie will continue to work with Jan and Gord for the next few weeks while they decide if they want to keep Sydney. Either way, all the work they are doing now will help this bird adjust to a new life in this home or somewhere else. For Mel, it's a familiar story and it's bittersweet. When it comes to bringing parrots into our homes, there is as much love as there is heartbreak.

MELANIE SHURA: 'Nobody connects with a bird or brings a bird into their home with the idea that it’s going to fall apart and their hearts will be broken and they will have sort of failed in their mind. They could not provide what this bird needed to be successful in this home or in this family. And however bad the birds have it, almost every case that I've worked with, the people are suffering as much if not more. Unfortunately the birds end up being the ones that get moved and that's just the way it is. The people have to come first. And most people in rescue don't talk that way but in my experience—100 per cent of the time—if the people aren't happy, the bird is not happy. So rare is the parrot that does have a forever home.

[Music: Piano]

[Voices overlap]

VOICE 1: Parrot for sale. Very friendly. Cage included. $350.

VOICE 2: For sale: double yellow-head amazon. Five years old. Fully feathered. I believe he’s a male.

VOICE 3: Seven-year-old male parrot for sale. He laughs, sings, dances. Comes with a cage, toys.

VOICE 4: I have an adorable Senegal parrot that we want to give to a new home. He’s super friendly and kind.

VOICE 5: Double yellow-head magna, one year old. Says hello, hi and bye-bye. Everybody loves him because he likes his independence. He’s quite a growler but never bites.

MF: No Forever Home was produced by Suzanne Dufresne and Winnipeg. The senior documentary editor for The Current is Josh Block. Since this story first aired in October we can tell you that parrot specialist Melanie Shura still shares her Winnipeg home with her feathered friends such as Sindbad, Motty and squeaky. However, it is a sad update about Sydney the cockatoo. Here's part of an email from Jan Sydney’s owner. She writes: “While some of the problem behaviors like screaming became livable, the experience of living at the World Parrot Refuge served to reinforce an extreme need to define and protect Sydney's territory. Unfortunately for me and the family dogs and visitors this meant she would often attack anyone or anything that might be near gored or her physical space. We had Sydney put to sleep about a month ago and had her buried on our property in Kenora. This was a decision that I know some people would think of as purely selfish. I hope that it will be a story that you can pass along to the many people who think that they want to have a bird as a pet. Not all pet stories have a happy ending and we will have to live with ours.” That e-mail from Sydney's owner. Jan you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. Another Jan, Jan Robson is the director of communications for the Greyhaven exotic bird sanctuary in BC. They rescued almost 600 birds when the World Parrot Refuge closed. Jan joins us from Vancouver with an update. Jan, hello.

JAN ROBSON: Hello Mike.

MF: How many of those 600 birds do you still have in your care?

JAN ROBSON: We have about 190 in our care right now, about 145 of them in a temporary shelter in Vancouver, aout 25 in a foster home and a few still at the vet clinic and in our original sanctuary space that we've maintained for Greyhaven.

MF: And how would you describe the birds that are left with you?

JAN ROBSON: You know it's been interesting over the last year to see them become themselves. I guess we're starting to see personalities emerge we're seeing you know the silly, the clown, the brave, the sassy and incredible, absolutely amazing creature.

MF: Yeah. And yet when we hear what happened to Sydney you can imagine why it is, in some circumstances, hard to find permanent homes for these birds, being that they came from that refuge to some. Well a very different situation now.

JAN ROBSON: Well and you know it's hard to find homes for parents period. You know we hear about backyard breeding operations with dogs and there's a rescue with 60 dogs saved. But when you consider the fact that the pool of potential adopters for parrots is smaller, that the care needs are greater for parrots. I think if you were going to make some kind of equivalency looking at 584 parrots is probably the equivalent to well over a thousand dogs or cats.

MF: What advice or cautions are you passing along to prospective owners about these parrots?

JAN ROBSON: There would be the standard ones adopting a parrot in general; long life, the fact that they can be very noisy, they do require specialized care, they are very social but also extra ones. I think it's probably fair to say that that many, perhaps most, of the birds have some degree of PTSD having gone through that situation. And so the bird may be wonderful when you take him home initially and then you start to see some issues. So we're you know telling people to expect that it won't necessarily be all rosy when they take the bird home. Also, that there may very well be medical issues that come up. We haven't done a complete testing of every single bird as it is, even not having done it, our medical bill is well over half a million dollars.

MF: What a crazy year you've had.

JAN ROBSON: It's been a very crazy year. Yes. It's also been probably the biggest privilege of my life, doing this.

MF: How so?

JAN ROBSON: You see, these creatures that have gone through a lot, we don't even know what situations they came from before they went to the world parrot refuge. And then when you see what's going on for them there, when you see the changes that they've gone through since they came into our care, we've had to move birds a few times. And yet you walk in the door and you know this one saying hello, another one saying I love you. They're dancing when you put the music on. It's a massive privilege.

MF: What's left to be done?

JAN ROBSON: Well, we certainly want homes for these birds. We're looking for the best homes possible. We don't just want to “Okay, you want a bird here you go”. We're also looking for volunteers always in Vancouver. It's fun looking after these birds but it's also incredibly hard work looking after them. So it's a constant turnover of volunteers. And then also donations if we were to adopt out the last bird tomorrow we would still be left with a mass of outstanding bills, so maybe consider a donation to Greyhaven.

MF: Jan Robson very much.

JAN ROBSON: Thanks so much for your time.

MF: Jan Robson, director of communications in the Greyhaven exotic bird sanctuary in BC and she was in Vancouver and head over to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent to see pictures of some of the birds we've been hearing about. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for short cuts from the BBC. Josie Long navigates the changing texture of a single day, with stories from the rush hour commute, through the night and until the dawn, from an afternoon with Dr. Clock the horologist, to a serendipitous voice reaching a woman in the darkness of the early hours. That's all coming up next on Shortcuts. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through our past episodes and start listening in just a few clicks and you can search for stories you missed or want to hear again. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Mike Finnerty. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current. And we'll see you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

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July 13, 2017 full episode transcript

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