Joe the Parrot

 The video below was submitted by Larry Staker.  It reminded me of a story told by David Gunderson 

Memories of Andrew Madsen’s Parrot, Joe ~ by David R. Gunderson

Early Photo of Hilda's House on State Street

I first met Joe in the late fall of 1942 when our family spent December at Aunt Hilda’s house in Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Originally, this home had been built by Andrew Madsen, Aunt Hilda’s father and my great-grandfather, and it was one of the first houses built outside the fort in the early 1860’s.

                                           Aunt Hilda

Joe lived in the south-west corner of Aunt Hilda’s kitchen and could speak in both English and Danish. Sometimes he used words in English that, as a five-year-old, I was not allowed to say. I don’t know about his Danish vocabulary, but I’ll bet it was just as colorful as his English vocabulary. I did notice that, unlike me, Joe’s mouth was never washed out with soap when he used any of his more colorful words. I also noticed that Dad and Uncle Bruce didn’t get the soap treatment either. I decided that maybe Aunt Hilda and Mom had just given up on all three of them A Picture of an Amazon Parrot

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We believe that Joe was an Amazon or perhaps a Military Macaw parrot and that he had been obtained by Andrew Madsen in the 1910 time frame after his first parrot had flown off. The story goes that one day in the early fall, the first parrot was placed on the front porch to get some sun. When he saw a flock of birds migrating south, he simply flew up and joined them. His wings had been clipped and family members feared for his safety. They carefully searched for him for several days but no sign of him was ever found in Sanpete.

Some years later, a group of LDS missionaries returning to Sanpete from Mexico, reported that they had seen a parrot, perched in a tree that looked like the Madsen’s lost bird. When they approached it to try to coax it down, it flew away swearing at them in both English and Danish. We can’t say, for sure if this bird was Andrew Madsen’s lost parrot, but the number of feral parrots in Northern Mexico at that time, with the lost bird’s coloring and the language skills, must have been extremely small.

Joe seems to have joined the family at about the time of my mother’s birth and a year or two after Aunt Hilda had resigned her management position in the Scofield Division of the Eastern Utah Telephone Company to take over the management of the Madsen home in Mt. Pleasant.

 Joe with Russel, Royal, Leoan, & Chesley Madsen

Joe was quite attached to Aunt Hilda and he loved my mother, Leoan. He and Mom had a lifelong friendship and they had seen each other nearly every day as Mom was growing up.

 When Mom was eighteen or nineteen years old, she entered the University of Utah and had to be away from home for some extended periods of time. Joe missed her during these periods and must have felt that she had been ignoring him. He took personal offense to this, and when she came home on breaks, Joe would totally ignore her for a day or so. We think this was just to teach her a lesson, and let her know how it felt to be ignored. But this never lasted long, and he would soon forgive her and welcome her back into his inner circle of friends.

Joe was always busy cracking seeds, preening his feathers, honing his beak, scolding, surveying his domain, or doing other things that are important to parrots. But, when you entered “his” kitchen, Joe would always stop all of his activities and say, “Hello Joe, Hello Joe” (always said twice) and then he would wait for you to say “Hello Joe” back before he resumed his busy schedule.

By the time I met him, Joe was about 32 years of age, late in his midlife years, and he had become a bit “crotchety”. Aunt Hilda warned us that Joe had been known to bite and cautioned us that we should keep away from him.

Joe always wanted to have things done “his way”, and when Aunt Hilda did something he didn’t like, I remember of seeing him charge at her feet, with his wings flapping, and scolding her at the top of his lungs. This made believers of us children, so after that, we enjoyed Joe from a safe distance. Joe seemed to have liked this arrangement because I don’t recall that any one of us was ever bitten or even scolded by Joe.

Joe had a perch, a cage, some toys, and a cover for the night. He also had a cup for food and one for water. Each morning, Aunt Hilda would give him fresh water, fill his food cup with sunflower and other seeds and give him fruits and greens. I loved to see him play with his toys, pick up a seed, shell it, and pop it into his mouth. He wasn’t very tidy with the seed shells, scattering them all around his perch.

Aunt Hilda raised sunflowers in her garden for Jo; the ones with the huge heads and equally huge seeds. She had quite a few of these dried sunflower “heads” stored in her back porch, and I remember that she recruited me to help her pick them or scrape the large seeds out of the “heads” for Joe. I loved her cat "Tom" helping to do something for him.

Hilda, "Joe the Parrot" and "Tom the Cat"

Aunt Hilda suffered from rheumatism which worsened as she grew older. When she was away for treatment or visiting nieces and nephews, she always left Joe with her cousin, Emma Anderson. The Andersons liked Joe and he seemed to have liked them as well. In 1944 or 1945, after Aunt Hilda had cared for Joe for some 35 years, she found that she could no longer carry on and Joe went to live with the Andersons permanently.

In 1948, Aunt Emma called to offer to let us have one of her newly born purebred wirehaired terrier puppies. (Aunt Emma was very selective about the people she would trust with one of her puppies, and it was a great honor to be given an opportunity to have one of them.) When we entered Aunt Emma’s kitchen to get my new pup, mother walked over towards Joe’s perch to say hello. Joe wasn’t ready for such familiarity with someone he didn’t recognize and he turned toward Mom, flapping his wings and squawking at the top of his lungs. This was not an angry attack but enough to let Mom know that he felt that she was intruding on his private space. Mom backed off a bit but continued to talk quietly to Joe.

When he had settled down, he seemed to begin to study her, like you would when you meet someone you think you should know. He then brightened up and called her name in his shrill parrot’s voice, first, softly as a question, then with increasing volume as he recognized her, and finally brightly as a welcome to a dear friend that he hadn’t seen in far to long a time.

“Leoan??? … Leoan??? …. Leoan!!!”

Joe then seemed delighted that Mom had come to visit him; he wanted her to pick him up, and let him stand on her shoulder so that he could preen her hair and “cuddle” her.  Mom let him stand on her hand and wrist and let him climb up to her shoulder once but didn’t trust him to stay there. Both Mom and Joe seemed to enjoy this renewal of their long friendship.

I believe this visit to Aunt Emma’s to get my new puppy was the last time we ever saw Joe. He died a year or two later at the young age (for parrots) of about 42 years, far short of the 60+ years he might have lived in the wild.

In all, Joe shared his life with four generations of our family. We all loved him, and enjoyed his quirky ways. I believe that, in his way, Joe loved us too.