Ink Tea Stone Leaf

If you’ve put your ear to the ground online, you may have heard people arguing that keeping pets is unethical. There are a lot of very serious points in favor of this argument, and I hope that anybody who wants to bring an animal into their home will strongly consider them before doing so. As charmed as we may be by the adorable, sensitive nature of companion animals, keeping one in captivity entails a high degree of responsibility that too many people simply don’t take seriously. There is no variety of pet for which this is not true.

Myself, I derive a lot of joy from my pets, and I intend to keep them in my home for the remainder of their natural lives, in safety, satiety, and in (reasonably) sanitary conditions*. However, my pets are birds, and birds being culturally resonant symbols of unfettered freedom as they are, and given that the requirements for caring well for even very small birds is much higher than people typically expect, I can only imagine what a truly militant anti-pet activist would think of me and my little captive flock.

*they just poop so much.

Of course, setting aside the proposition that all pet ownership is inherently unethical, there are ethical and unethical ways to approach the practice. I’ve made every effort to be an upstanding bird guy: I handle and speak to my birds gently, I arrange for their regular medical care, I give them clean water and feed them nutritious food as recommended by the veterinarian, I clean their cages once a week, and I provide them with daily opportunities to safely fly, climb, chew, vocalize, and socialize as they will.

As for the right and wrong of keeping them in the first place, it’s only fair to address the impact of the pet trade on wild populations, particularly as these birds are parrots, and parrot populations are affected by the trade in a particularly negative way. Many species are threatened by declining wild numbers, and individual captured birds often face dire conditions in transport and breeding and sale, as well as unsatisfactory or dangerous conditions in the home in which they ultimately arrive. I acquired my lovebird, Sherbert, from a rescue agency, not from a pet store. My conure Yoshi is ultimately from a pet store, but was re-homed to us by a family that determined they could not care for him properly. I could hardly have done better in the course of bringing these creatures into my home.

Why go to such lengths to lay out the ethics of keeping these birds? The simple answer is that, on a basic level, I love them. When my lovebird Bonnie (Sherbert’s dear companion of many years) died two years ago after I spent months trying to help her heal from a sore on her chest, I felt the loss like a bruise on my heart. Last weekend, Yoshi accidentally flew head first into the living room window, and was so visibly dazed by the experience that I thought he might have suffered brain damage; I brought him to the door of an emergency vet within twenty minutes. I spent a whole day worrying over this silly creature and whether I was missing an obvious sign of his impending death, even as he seemed to fully recover within the hour.

Waking up to find my birds alert and eager in the morning is a joyful experience, as is playing with them and holding them (when they let me). When I look at Sherbert, whose disabled legs would have spelled an early death in her native environment, I feel grateful that she has had the opportunity to live so many years in good health instead. Caring for these animals and tending to their needs keeps me in touch with important parts of myself.

Ultimately, I think that worrying overmuch about whether having a pet is the same as doing something wrong gives too little credit to an important piece of human nature: we are motivated to an extreme degree by love. It isn’t always rational and it isn’t always entirely positive, but denying what we love can damage our hearts, and turning our love into something good is an excellent way to fortify them instead. It takes wisdom and determination to do this right, and it shouldn’t be done at all if you don’t have the means or the intention of doing it right, but it is one rewarding way to do what comes naturally to us.

As for the ethics of the parrot trade, if ever I should adopt more birds in the future I have given serious thought to pigeons as an alternative. Pigeons, unlike parrots, are actually domesticated animals, and while they lack the raw intelligence of most parrot species they are still beautiful, sensitive animals. If more people with the commitment to care well for birds chose pigeons and doves (there’s not really a difference between them) over parrots as their companions, it would do both kinds of birds a valuable service.