WHITEWINGS EDITORIAL

 

     Whitewings Farm is a small sanctuary, which we are hoping will be slowly closed down over the next 4 to 5 years.  I am hoping most of the birds, other than our personal companions, will be adopted into experienced, loving, and permanent homes.  I use that terminology deliberately because most of them were not brought here because they were 'easy'.

 

     We were once breeders.  And no, no matter how hard we tried or what we believed, we did NOT always end with our babies in the best homes.  I am still trying to find three of our babies; two Eleanora Cockatoos, and a Timneh African Grey.  When I do so, IF I do so, I will be able to say I know the location of every baby that hatched at Whitewings Farm.  I fear, however, that those last are a hopeless quest.  I've been searching since 1997.  I do understand how 'good breeders' feel about what they do.  I was once one of them, and I was proud of it.

 

     Whitewings stopped being a breeding farm back in 1998.  Because, good breeder, bad breeder, or indifferent, it is with the breeders that the responsibility most truly does lie for the oversupply of birds in the marketplace today, and the overcrowding of the avian shelters.  Unless, we ourselves, can provide space, and food, and attention for every baby we make possible to be hatched, supposing they do not sell, or must at some time be given up by their purchaser, we have NO RIGHT to make possible their arrival into the world.  It is because of OUR choices for their parents, that they have come to be, and therefore the responsibility for them and the disposition of their lives remains ever with us.

 

Baby parrots are a totally incredible glory and ineffable wonder.  I miss having them arrive here all new and full of promise.  I miss the joy and delight of caring for them.  Then I look at the 48 parrots already living here and wonder where I would put a baby, or a clutch of babies, if I made possible their entrance into this world.  And then I'm glad I've put myself firmly in a position of NOT doing that very thing.  Instead, I've put myself in the position of having to say NO to taking in one more set of feathers that needs a place to live because of whatever reason.  Why?  Because be the reasons good, bad or indifferent, there is no more room at this Inn.  My husband and I have no more hours to give, nor money to spend, nor room to spare; nor are our years running backwards.  Like everyone else we are getting older, and the work is getting correspondingly harder, and more time consuming.

 

     In my own experience: as long as there are human beings who believe that life in any form other than their own, is not just expendable, but unaware, insentient, stupid, without loyalty, or love, as long as those lives are labeled 'just an animal', something to be thrown away, passed by, dumped, turned out, left: the sanctuaries, rescues, humane societies, pounds, are going to continue to be needed.  For some unknowable reason, the fact of all the animals filling those facilities, unwanted, bewildered, confused, and dying alone, far from all they knew and trusted, for some UNFATHOMABLE reason, this does NOTHING to deter others from making possible the creation and births of ever more.  I don't understand it, and I DO understand it; every time I hold any newborn creature I understand it again, and these two things war within me, most bitterly.

 

     It seems to me that education is, as always, the key.  To start with the children in the schools, teaching them the intrinsic value of ALL life, no matter its form.  Teaching that no being deserves to be wasted; left deserted, confused and alone.  Maybe then, just maybe, things will get better.  I don't know HOW you get these things taught in our schools.  But those of us who were taught these basic life values, and have taught them in our time, and now are watching our children teach these same values, we do not seem to be enough.  At least not enough to empty the shelters, the alleyways, the roadways, the river basins, the parking lots: all the places people find to dump the no longer 'cute', the pregnant, the loud, the destructive, or the just inconvenient.

 

     I know the argument; that if all the good breeders stop, there will be nothing left but the chaff: the indifferent, the bad, and the downright monsters.  But, I know some of the birds here at Whitewings are from so called "Good Breeders".  Nonetheless, here they are, not with their original owners, and not with those who made their lives possible.  The outcome, no matter what kind of breeder is/was the same: Sanctuary.

It has to stop.

 

Gloria Ridgway

Whitewings Farm

January 31, 2002