Act Two
"Polly Wants So Much More Than a Cracker."
When Veronica tells this story, it's a story about love. When she was 17, she saw a bird in a pet store, a macaw, which is kind of a big parrot-- brightly colored, with a three-foot wingspan.
Veronica
And I fell in love with her immediately. And, you know, I was still in high school. I had no money whatsoever.
Ira Glass
How expensive was she?
Veronica
Well, the price tag on the cage said $1,400, which was an inordinate amount of money.
Ira Glass
So how long did it take you to pay off the bird?
Veronica
It took me about five years to pay her off, working part-time jobs, babysitting.
Ira Glass
And what did you love about her? What was the thing that drew you to her?
Veronica
I find it hard to say, exactly, why I was drawn to her. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It's hard to describe how it feels to love an animal. But as soon as I saw her face, I just thought she was the most beautiful thing, and I had to have her, and I wanted to see that face every day, and I wanted to care for her. And I didn't know anything about bringing up parrots, or feeding them, or caring for them. I just wanted to take her home like a big-- like a treasure.
Ira Glass
OK. Fast-forward 23 years.
When we first broadcast this story, Veronica was 40 years old, married with two twin boys, Kyle and Cameron, aged five, and another boy, Daniel, who was eight. One of the things she didn't know about parrots when she first saw her macaw is that they can live for 80 years-- 80. So every morning, she would take the bird, whose name is Gideon, out of her cage so she could freely wander the house.
Veronica
And get into things she shouldn't get into, like a baby-- climbing into laundry baskets and ripping up clothes, and taking the kids' Pokemon cards and ripping them to shreds, and pulling newspapers out of boxes.
Ira Glass
And so at breakfast, you've got three little kids there.
Veronica
The kids will interact with each other. And Gideon will scream as loud as she can over their heads.
Ira Glass
Now let's play a recording of Gideon for people at home.
It sounds really loud.
Veronica
It's intolerable. It's a sound that you don't want to hear.
Ira Glass
It sounds very dinosaur-like.
Veronica
Yeah. Well--
Ira Glass
The word you just used was intolerable?
Veronica
It's the most unpleasant sound I think I have ever heard.
Ira Glass
But you've lived with this sound for 23 years.
Veronica
I've lived with that sound for 23 years. It's in my dreams. It's wherever I go. It's in the kitchen. It's in the dining room. It's in my bedroom. And the kids have grown up with her. So they won't really notice it at first. But after about the fourth or fifth scream, they will start covering their ears and shouting back at the bird.
Cameron
You stop it please?
Mommy, will you take me and put her in the tree?
Ira Glass
Now you tape little interviews with your kids about Gideon. Here's Cameron, who's five.
Veronica
Do you like having Gideon in the family?
Cameron
Not really.
Veronica
Would you rather that she went somewhere else?
Cameron
Yeah. All the way to Sco-- to England. Because I don't want her to scream when we're watching TV.
Veronica
Would you rather have a different kind of pet than Gideon?
Cameron
Yeah. A dog that is really nice and doesn't bite and doesn't bark.
Veronica
But do you understand why mommy loves Gideon?
Cameron
No.
Ira Glass
This is Kyle, the other twin, also five.
Kyle
One time she just almost bited off my thumb. That kind of scared me.
Veronica
They're terrified of Gideon. If they're approached by her, they'll immediately scream and run away. They won't go near her now.
Ira Glass
And is that because Gideon is, in fact, a little dangerous? They're right to be a little scared?
Veronica
Well, Gideon's primary objective in life is to be my mate. And so every other person or creature that comes near me is a threat to our relationship. And my children are a very big threat to our relationship because we have physical contact with each other. She sees me carrying them and cooking for them and touching them and picking them up. And so she has a desire to kill them, basically. I mean, in the bird world, she would kill another predator or some intrusive love interest.
Ira Glass
Now after your kids were born and you saw how Gideon reacted to your children, and you saw how your children reacted to Gideon-- they were scared, that Gideon bit Kyle-- did it change your feelings about Gideon?
Veronica
I don't think anything can change my feelings about Gideon.
Ira Glass
But if I had a dog that I loved, and then I had a new baby in the house, and the dog was hostile towards the baby, I wouldn't feel the same way about the dog. I would feel protective of my kid, which I'm sure you did.
Veronica
Well, I do feel protective of the children, and I take certain steps to protect them from her, but I can't stop loving her because of her natural tendency to want to drive away competition.
Ira Glass
As I said, this is a love story, and that Veronica knows Gideon is driving everybody else who she loves crazy. She loves the bird. The same monogamous feelings that make Gideon mean to everyone else make Gideon fantastically sweet to Veronica. Gideon watches her every move, cuddles with her, blushes. Gideon actually blushes when they play together. She is all that Gideon lives for, and it's hard to turn away from that.
Thank you, Gideon. Veronica also worries that if she gave the bird away, the bird would die. They mate so fiercely that sometimes when their mate vanishes, that can happen.
I know, Gideon, it's upsetting.
And then there's this story. When Veronica was 18 and barely owned Gideon for a year, she took Gideon outside like she did every day. And Gideon flew away. Veronica hadn't been careful enough clipping her feathers. She was wrecked. Every night, Veronica cried herself to sleep. Every day she sat on the roof, watching the skies. After six days, a kid on his way to school spotted the bird.
Veronica
And I quickly ran to where he said she was. And I saw her in probably the tallest tree and immediately scaled the tree, got all the way to the top. I was up about 50 feet. She was on the end of the branch, all the way out. And so I inched my way out.
And about 3/4 of the way out-- I was only a foot away from her-- the branch snapped. And I fell straight down without hitting anything on the way. And just fell 50 feet and landed on my feet on hard ground. And I suffered a multiple compression fracture of my spine and I had a collapsed lung. I should have died, according to the orthopedic surgeon.
Ira Glass
Do you think the fact that you nearly died trying to save Gideon is one of the things that makes it impossible for you to give Gideon up?
Veronica
That's something I've thought about. Yeah, it's quite possible. I feel like it's brought us closer. It's not a pleasant thing that happened, but I feel like she would have died out there.
Ira Glass
You say that it brought us closer, but you're the only one who actually understands that you went out and you got injured trying to save Gideon. Gideon doesn't understand that.
Veronica
No, she doesn't understand that, but I know she understands something. She's very bonded to me. She became so close to me at one point that her hormones produced an egg. And that's something that happens only between couples. So I know she feels something. I don't really need to know much more than that.
Ira Glass
In the end, I think this is only partly a story about Veronica's love for Gideon. It's also a story about her family's love for her, that they put up with the bird. We all want to believe that the people who love us will at least accept the parts of us that are not so appealing. And in Veronica's case, the unappealing part just happens to have physical form and be a bird. Every day that her kids and her husband put up with that, they prove to her just how much they love her.
Kyle
I just don't know why you had to buy her. How much bucks was she?
Veronica
She cost a lot of money.
Kyle
Like how much money?
Veronica
She cost like $1,400.
Kyle
Whoa, just for a parrot? Why would they do that? Hi.
Ira Glass
The most remarkable thing, I think, about the phrase "I love you" is how rarely it's used literally to mean I love you, that I have a feeling of love for you. It's used much more often, I think, to mean 100 other things. Tell me that you love me. Or I need to get off the phone now. Or things are fine between us, right? Or yes, it's fine that we keep the parrot.