Shirotori's Journal

a very sad day for me
One of my oldest friends, and the being that my account here is named
after, died today. My Umbrella Cockatoo, Shiro Tori, has passed on to
wherever it is that Cockatoos go - I do hope it is a good place.

She was maybe 16 years old, but she did not die of natural causes, per
se, she died when someone who does house work at our house brought
in a teflon coated pan and cooked with it.

For those not familiar with this problem, people who own birds are (or at least
should be) very cafeful to not have any teflon (non-stick) cookware around,
because if it is overheated it outgases stuff that is super-poison to birds (while
we consider this, why is it not bad for people? or is it?)

We had been careful in the past, in that we had made sure the house had none
of these things in it, but even though we had mentioned it to Celina, the woman
who has worked for us for 4 years, there was someone who was working for her,
and we are pretty sure that she simply never really understood what we were
talking about, as she has no english.

We are all crushed by this of course; The little white bird has been a part of our lives
for a long, long time.

Kurt Bauman and Mikki Barry gave her to me around 1990 or 91, and she
was the official office bird and my near constant companion as we started Digex
in the offices above the Chinese resturant in Greenbelt. During the winter when it
was so cold up there, she would stand on the backs of the Hitachi color monitors
where all the heat was streaming up. We passed her around the office not because
she needed to be accompanied, but because she was great company for the people
there. Melissa McDowell, Mym, RS, and many more early Digex people spent many
days and nights with Shiro on their monitors keeping them company, shredding
straws from the thousands of big gulps that were consumed at Digex from the 7-11
that we single handed kept in business across the square,

When Digex moved to 6800 shiro was one of the first people there, and when we were
meeting with the early venture partners who were backing digex, shiro was generally
there, sitting on top of a door looking sage and wise, or maybe it was just sleeping ;-)
There is a famous moment when one of the VC, a very straight laced guy, came in and
hung his suit jacket over the corner of the door, and managed to do this without seeing
Shiro sitting there, about at the middle of the door (the whole room was white, so she
must have just blended in). The rest of the VC saw her though, and when she opened an
eye, then two, then put her other foot down, all in very slow motion, and started
inching toward the coat, they all started laughing and gesturing, and the senior VC guy
saw it all, and got to his coat just before Shiro did. She just went back to sleep, keeping
an eye on all of us.

The El Torito in Greenbelt, also no longer with us, was a place where they accepted Shiro
and let her have lunch with us all the time - that was a blast and of course Shiro loved it.
She was a natural ham, loved to show off to people, enjoyed lots of human attention, and
at that time she travelled with me all the time, every day, so she was very used to things
that a "normal" bird would never be able to deal with. She was the most "socialized" bird
that I have ever known or heard of. She was potty trained (thanks Kurt and Mikki) which
made this being in public much easier - when I was driving around in my truck, with the
bird on my shoulder, I would roll down the window at stop lights and hold the bird out the
window and she would poop instantly; always amusing to the other drivers at the intersection.

As Digex got more corporate Shiro started spending more time at home - she knew how to
drink from coke cans, knew to drop them in the recycling box and was just plain smart.
She loved the foam on a Starbucks Latte, and the coffee too, truth be known, and most good
red wines she would try to get a taste for (the bubbles in bubbly disturbed her nose). She
was an incredible joy to me for something like 14 years, and was in good health so I think
she would have been with us much longer. This one small slip-up, one pan of a kind sold all
over the world, in every shop, and she is dead.

The other birds who used to live with us, Luna the goffins cockatoo, and Deadeye the greenwing
mccaw are fine, because they are living with Stacy Smith and thus were not here when this happened.

Shiro died in my arms as Lisa was driving us to the emergency vet - until the very last I hope I
was able to comfort her and let her know that we cared for her and loved her. I am so sorry for
this, I apologize to all of Shirobirds friends, and she had so many.

So, I am kinda exhausted after today. I will write more later, and I am going to put up a Shiro
tribute site - not too many birds got their picture in the Wash Post, with their name in the
caption, so there are many reasons to remember the wonderful little Shirobird.

doug

P.S. Please feel free to comment on this with your rememberences about Shiro.
This is a good place to collect peoples thoughts.

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