Posted on 09/08/2007 11:55:49 AM PDT by grjr21
We are deeply saddened to announce Alex died Friday morning, September 7, 2007, of unknown causes.
We will have a formal press release on Monday when we know the cause of death. He was absolutely fine yesterday and he was found dead this morning.
Dr. Pepperberg will take the weekend to mourn his death.
We hope to have more information on Monday We miss him so much.
Thank you, Arlene Levin-Rowe - Pepperberg Lab Manager and the Pepperberg Lab Staff
(Excerpt) Read more at alexfoundation.org ...
Thanks for the link.
I heartily second that recommendation!
We have an 8 yr old African Grey at our house we started bonding with before the feathers even came in. She taunts the dogs and cats, has a sense of humor, and ‘burps’ nearly every time my husband or son enters or leaves the room. She picked her ‘favorite’ sneeze off of a TV commersial and uses it to mock us when we sneeze. (In case you don’t get that -she knows what a sneeze is and didn’t just ‘parrot’ a repeat of a sound we make, but chose her own and uses it when appropriate) She has such a high vocabulary and a COMPLETE understanding of word and sentance structure that she says things that no one else has said for her to ‘copy’. (For example -when she answers the phone -her phone- she will answer in one house voice, talk a moment, then call for someone else to continue the call, then continue in that voice -once answering in my husband’s voice, then calling out “Mom!... It’ Mom!” then after ‘giving me time to pick up’ had me talking to me. That has NEVER happened in our house)
She also WILL NOT poo on me (her favorite) but anyone else in the house is fair game, and she will aim at the cats...
Our Phoenix (named after a comic book character of the name Jean GREY a.k.a. Phoenix -the legendary mythical BIRD- red tail feathers, flowing red tresses... so sue me, I’m a comic book geek) is an untrained, beloved house pet with more personality than some people can believe, that should live about 80 yrs unless something happens. She is so smart she almost scares me.
When our 15yr old Golder Retriever died,(being the only other animal in the house she liked and was nice to) she figured it out after about a couple of weeks and went into mourning. She went into the back of her cage, went silent, and kept her back to us for nearly 2 weeks. She stopped eating, drinking and poo-ing (And you notice that with a decent sized bird) NEARLY completely. We were terrified she was going to die. We talked and talked to her as if she were a small child and she finally came out of it. When the new golden puppy came to the house it just wasn’t the same and she dislikes her as she does the cats that she pesters. With our second dog loss last year, (a Shelty of about her age) she did not mourn, but she continues to call out her name and ‘answer’ in a bark that is dead up perfect. It’s almost as if she’s keeping a little bit of our lost one in the house.
The world famous Alex was a highly and intensively trained professional. He was incredible! His handler/teacher/mother loved him very much and will feel his loss forever.
She has my prayers.
I and my family can personally vouch for that statement. Having known both Dr. Pepperberg and Alex.
My best well trained Lab who passed on a few years ago has his 8x10 pic in a fancy bridal/groom type of frame sitting where I can see him and remember him everyday.
His AKC name was St. Maximillian Marie “KOLBE”
Out of all 7 labs I have raised he will always be the “special” one due to his talents and extreme dedication to us.
The crew I have now 4yrs, 3yrs and 2yrs old are all special in their own ways but they act more like well dogs and Kolbe was not like a normal dog. His personality was so much like our family traits it freaked people out.
He would not leave out side so he traveled everywhere with us.
He would sit in the driver seat and watch us while we shopped and when we where gone to long he would honk the horn, yes it got him allot of attention and me back to the van.
They say there goes her psycho dog.
He could open an close doors for us (have pics to prove it).
He tried operating the WC lift one time and I had to nix him on that whole idea. No no no esp if we were going down the freeway.
Why would you buy a single billiards ball from a bird?
We had cockatiels but I was not that good with them as they were not comfortable with me, bit the heck out of me and did not like the wings clipped.
At the same time our neighbors had one and they watched 700 Club back then daily.
Their Birds fave saying “Praise the Lord”. : )
A friend of mine, a wonderful gal from L’vul, but living here in Covington, had her African grey kidnapped and she negotiated a ransom. I am not making this up! The poor bird was truly traumatized by the event, withdrew, spent months plucking out its own feathers, etc. I actually think my unfortunant friend eventually sought some sort of avian psychologial help for the messed up creature.
WOW... I can so see that...
We’re just Indiana side of L’vul and took our Phoenix to Dr. Sam Vaun (I know I’ve forgotted how to spell his last name- but he’s a pretty well known bird and more doc) when she had an impacted preen gland. She still bites off her pretty red tail feathers when they just start looking nice, but I’ll live without the red feathers to keep from stressing her out with Prozac (no kidding) and the ‘collar of hell’.
I saw a special on dear, departed Alex when it showed him doing his thing and he must have been molting ‘cause he looked pretty rough. I decided to just let her have her head and do what she wanted, weaning off the meds SLOWLY.
She’s doing great. The ‘Bird Lady’ -Carol- we got her from as a baby asked me at a bird show meet up if she’d knocked my socks off yet. With-in weeks of no meds and collar, the talk and logic showed and she hasn’t stopped since.
African Greys can learn new things throughout their lives. They are wonderous.
Wow. He was beautiful. How sad.
It sounds to me like Kolbe was a very special “person,” and you were lucky to have enjoyed the pleasure of his company. I thank God every morning for the time I get to share with Baron. Dogs teach us a lot about we should live our own lives.
Sweet, funny and affectionate. Surely you can’t be talking about cockatiels. Our is evil personified. He bites, squawks and is just plain mean.
It’s like losing a 3 year old, with a beak.
I agree, I have parrots at home and they are like my children. I hand raised several and they are “my babys”. I can’t imagine loosing one of them even though none of my birds are nearly as talented as Alex was.
More from the AP wire:
Alex’s advanced language and recognition skills revolutionized the understanding of the avian brain. After Pepperberg bought Alex from an animal shop in 1973, the parrot learned enough English to identify 50 different objects, seven colors, and five shapes. He could count up to six, including zero, was able to express desires, including his frustration with the repetitive research.
He also occasionally instructed two other parrots at the lab to “talk better” if they mumbled, though it wasn’t clear if he was simply mimicking researchers.
Pepperberg said Alex hadn’t reached his full cognitive potential and was demonstrating the ability to take distinct sounds from words he knew and combine them to form new words. Just last month, he pronounced the word “seven” for the first time.
Pepperberg said the last time she saw Alex was Thursday. They went through their goodnight routine, in which she told him it was time to go in the cage and said: “You be good, I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Alex responded, “You’ll be in tomorrow.”
How sad! I wonder what happened? I wonder if they’ll do a birdie autopsy ... I’d want one done. He was too young. How sad.
I suspect fowl play...
DOH!!!! LOL LOL
Mark
They can be cage trained. My father had a parrot years ago who was able to fly freely around his apartment, but my dad trained him to fly back to his cage before relieving himself. Then he'd get back to whatever he was doing.
Mark
Yep thats him there is a PBS video of him here
http://vvi.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=pbs-saf&template=template.html&query=pepperberg&category=0&viKeyword=pepperberg&submit=Search
No obvious cause of death.
Why do I keep thinking "Floweres for Algernon "
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.