City ParrotsUrban Scarlet Macaw & Parrot Conservation

By DREW EARY; Martinsville Bulletin

Donna Draper, the unit administrative assistant for the Henry County Virginia Cooperative Extension Office, rarely commutes to work alone. Instead, she takes one of her pet parrots with her.

Kaloca, a 13-inch Hahns Mini-Macaw, travels with Draper to work in a carrier each morning and spends most of her time in her office in a cage.

“Kaloca loves to come to work,” Draper said. “I just started bringing her to work about a year ago because she is good company. I carry her around in a carrier, and whenever I get the carrier out, she starts hollering so that she can get in and go to work.”

Kaloca is talkative at work, Draper said.

“She says ‘hello,’ ‘bye-bye,’ ‘tickle-tickle,’ as well as, ‘How are you?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ She hollers ‘tickle-tickle’ constantly when she is excited,” Draper said.

Her colleagues do not mind Kaloca’s presence, Draper said.

“They seem to like her,” she said. “She’s very particular, so she won’t go to them, but she does jabber with them.”

Along with Kaloca, Draper owns two other birds, a cockatiel named Idgy and a green-cheeked conure named Punk. She said she sometimes takes Punk to work instead of Kaloca.

“I don’t take the cockatiel to work because I’m afraid he will break his foot in the cage,” she said.

Draper first started taking her birds to work when one of them was sick so that she could “keep an eye” on the bird.

“One of the benefits of working in the extension office is that it allows for me to bring my birds to work,” she said of the office that works with environmental and agricultural issues in the community. “Everyone always asks me where my birds are. We even have clients that come in and ask about them.”

Draper got her first bird in 2001 when her son, Jason, bought her a parakeet as a present after she graduated from Patrick Henry Community College. Since then, she has purchased the three birds she currently owns and added a sunroom to her home in Ridgeway to give her birds their own room.

“I just love parrots,” Draper said. “I’m just addicted to them. They are great pets. You just have to make sure you give them enough attention and properly take care of them.”