The Bird Market of Paris by Nikki Moustaki

container, then filled a needle-less syringe with formula and placed it inside each baby’s beak. The babies pumped their little heads up and down, swallowing the formula until their crops filled like balloons. Most birds have a crop, a stretchy, saclike organ below the esophagus. Below that is the proventriculus, which secretes enzymes to help digest the food, which then travels to the gizzard, a muscular stomach that grinds the hard food birds typically eat. I stopped feeding before their crops became too full—the crop can become stretched, and bacteria may grow in the crevices.
    Once the babies ate, they clumped themselves inside the critter keeper and fell asleep on top of one another in a pile of skin and feet. I arrived late for my philosophy class, but at least my babies wouldn’t interrupt our discussion of Aristotle.
    Maybe I was a weird student. Bonk had become the be-all and end-all of birdness for me, and I had embarked on a search for that kind of love in everything feathered from then on, mostly in the form of lovebirds, the purest form of love and grace I had ever known. Someone left a well-behaved red-lored Amazon parrot named Miami Bird with me for boarding and never picked her up, so I added her to my flock. She taught a lot of the lovebirds to catcall, and I spent hours training her to do a variety of tricks, from spinning on her perch to waving hello.
    Naughty little Bonk liked to stand on the books I was studying and shred the tops of each page, so I couldn’t sell back my college textbooks. When I typed my term papers she hopped onto the keyboard and picked at the keys until I plucked her back onto my shoulder. She stole the question mark key and I had to glue it back in place.
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    I spent weekends traveling to bird club meetings and bird shows and expos all over Florida, showing my birds in competitions and winning ribbons and trophies. Sometimes Poppy came with me. The birds took up a generous part of my everyday life. My flock needed to be fed and cleaned every morning, which took well over an hour, and then tended for an hour in the evening. The lovebird babies needed feeding and cleaning at least four times a day. I did my chores by rote, considering them more a blessing than a burden. When Bonk wasn’t nesting, she’d ride on my shoulder and chirp into my ear as I cleaned cages and fed her flock mates. There were avian details to memorize and consummate, too—how to pull a blood feather from a bird’s wing in case of emergency; how to hold a bird around the neck rather than its body because birds breathe differently than humans; how to recognize the signs of avian illness; how to stop bleeding; and how to know if a change in attitude was hormonal, behavioral, or medical.
    I spent hours memorizing the Latin names for the bird species I wanted, peeling through the pages of Joseph Forshaw’s Parrots of the World , a huge illustrated book with images of every parrot in the known universe. The lovebird species sounded like poetry: Agapornis roseicollis , Agapornis fischeri , Agapornis personata . I’d lie in bed staring into the darkness and repeat those names over and over until sleep came. They felt like a safety blanket. My peers in college participated in activities that created opportunities to socialize with associates and colleagues later in life—tennis, skiing, sailing, chess. I played with birds.
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    â€œYou need to find a man,” Dr. Zielezienski, my avian veterinarian, admonished every time I saw her, which was often as my flock grew. I knew I’d found a compatriot in birds when I met Dr. Z, an avian wizard, able to handle the most bronco of parrots. She had a wry sense of humor, the slightest Virginia twang, and a sweet, reassuring, respectful manner, even when she chastised me for being bird addicted.
    â€œYou’re spending too much time with these birds,” she’d say as I