Ralphie the macaw, 1993-2024: Lessons in unconditional love

For the second time in five weeks, I grieve the loss of a dear, dear friend. On November 20 Dom Underwood passed away after his battle with vascular dementia came to a peaceful end. Five weeks later, I find myself still grieving the loss of a truly wonderful man who was my mother’s husband, best friend, companion and confidant for 52 years. So many things I miss about him, but most of all the lessons he gave in unconditional love. He loved freely and didn’t ask or demand anything in return.

Yesterday, I lost another dear friend, this one the feathered variety. My yellow collared macaw passed away after a sudden but devastating illness. Her name was Ralphie. I won’t bore you with the details on how a female got the name Ralphie, but she hatched 31 years ago and adopted me seven weeks later. I say adopted because you NEVER adopt a macaw. I was there in Chiefland the day she hatched, and by the time she was four weeks old, she knew who I was. When it came time to take her home on my birthday, she was ready to go, totally unafraid and comfortable being held. Seven weeks old, riding in a car for the first time, completely trusting me that I was going to take care of her. She trusted me completely from August 21, 1993 until the moment she died.

I fed her from a bottle. She was supposed to be weaned at 12 weeks. Twelve weeks came and went. She was still on the bottle. She would fluff her feathers, cry real tears and beg for her bottle. I gave in. Ralphie was nine months old when she gave up the bottle, no thanks to me. I had to go out of town for 10 days. She stayed with a friend who didn’t buy the tears. I came home and she was eating real food.

She loved to ride in a car, especially if she could sit on my shoulder and look out the window. Food was always an adventure. She loved things like rice, macaroni and cheese, green beans, baby lima beans, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, blueberries, grapes (green), apple (only Granny Smith), cheese, french fries (Checkers, not McDonald’s) and orange juice. She felt a need to try whatever it was I was eating. I could give her the same thing in her food bowl but she had to come to my plate because what I was eating had to be better than what I had shared with her. She begged to try coffee until she discovered that hot coffee and her tongue were mortal enemies.

She loved the music of Elvis, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and Guy Penrod. She had a particular love for hearing my sister Donna sing. Donna is the minister of music at Bay Street Baptist Church. She has a beautiful voice. Upon hearing Donna sing, Ralphie would chime in. Well, she always thought she was singing but in her tiny macaw brain she thought the two of them were making beautiful music.

She loved football and basketball games on television, especially if she could sit on my shoulder. No, she didn’t know the game, but the sounds of the crowd and bands blaring excited her.

For 31 years, this little bird thought I was her mother. She was raised in captivity and wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if she had been forced to make a go of it on her own in the wild. She depended on me the way a small child depends on mom to take care of their every need. When I was living in Altamonte Springs, she was frightened by a car backfire as I was walking to my car with her on my shoulder. She flew away. She had never flown before, never had a reason to fly in fact. She disappeared. For more than two hours I tried to find her without success. Just when I thought she was gone for good, I checked my watch. It was 6 p.m. Dinner time. I started calling her name and she answered, about 30 feet up on the top branch of an oak tree, no idea where she was or how she got there, much less how she was going to get down. I called the fire department and they sent out a truck with a gondola. I’m not good with heights but I went up in the gondola to rescue Ralphie. When I reached out, she climbed onto my hand and went straight to my shoulder. When the gondola got close to the ground, it jerked and there was a loud sound. Ralphie flew again. This time to a palm tree right in front of my condo. The process was repeated, only this time she was wrapped in a towel. When we got into the condo, she bit my ear several times. Her way of telling me her big adventure was no fun at all.

When I moved home to Gainesville to help care for my parents, Ralphie bonded with both of them. They adored her. They gave her treats but most of all, they gave her love and she loved them back. When Dom passed away, Ralphie went into a nearly three week depression. She would hop down off her perch, walk on the floor to where Dom’s bed used to be and then she would scream to anyone who would listen, her way of asking where an important member of her flock had gone to.

In the Amazon jungles of Peru and Brazil, yellow collared macaws live in flocks that sometimes number several thousand. They fly sometimes 30 miles from their nest in a single day, yet at the end of the day they will fly back to the same tree where they started. How do they know which tree among thousands and thousands is the place where they make their nest?

Ralphie didn’t fly 30 miles away but she made a nest in the bottom of her cage. She got in her cage at night for sleeping and when she perceived something was wrong. She gave us no clue that she was sick until Christmas Day. She clung to my chest as I drove her to the University of Florida vet school, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand to hold her close and keep her warm. She let out these tiny groans. I talked to her the entire drive to the Archer Road ER, played some music hoping it would calm her.

When it came time to admit her, she cried and tried to hold on to me. She was scared and she was being taken from “mom.” They labored over her throughout the night but mid-morning Thursday, I got the call that her kidneys had shut down.

I held her the last time Thursday afternoon. She was in an oxygen chamber, struggling to breathe when her little heart gave way, breaking mine the moment she took her last breath. Just 48 hours earlier she had climbed up my leg and onto my shoulder to “help” me write. Christmas Eve she climbed up my leg, got on my shoulder and bit my ear. Not a bite intended to hurt because her beak was powerful enough to rip my ear off. This was her way of telling me it was OUR time and 10:30 meant time for maple walnut ice cream.  She would sit on my hand and pick out the walnuts, carefully licking the ice cream off before she devoured her favorite nut of all.

Thursday night I sat in the same chair where we used to sit for late night ice cream. I couldn’t eat any ice cream, didn’t really want any because my friend whom Dom Underwood dubbed “the little green child” wasn’t there to share it with me.

Dom and Ralphie. Two marvelous friends who loved me unconditionally. Since November 20 there has been a void because Dom is no longer here. Tonight the void has been doubled. I grieve. I ache. I pray to God a selfish prayer hoping that they passed away knowing I loved them even a tenth as much as they loved me.