Polly Want A Career As A Social Worker

The Formerly Gray Lady has a piece on unusual guide-pets (it goes way beyond dogs). Freakiest is this bi-polar psychotic homicidal fellow who can live a normal life thanks to Sadie the Parrot.

When he gets upset, she talks him down, saying: “It’s O.K., Jim. Calm down, Jim. You’re all right, Jim. I’m here, Jim.” She somehow senses when he is getting agitated before he even knows it’s happening. “I still go off on people sometimes, but she makes sure it never escalates into a big problem,” he told me, grinning bashfully at Sadie. “Now when people make me mad I just give them the bird,” he said, pulling up his sleeve and flexing his biceps, which is covered with a large tattoo of Sadie.Soon after what he calls “the Archbishop Incident,” Eggers got Sadie from a friend who owned a pet store. She’d been neglected by a previous owner and had torn out all her feathers, so Eggers nursed her back to health. He didn’t initially train her as a service animal, he says; she did that herself. When Eggers had episodes at home, he’d pace, holding his head and yelling: “It’s O.K., Jim! You’re all right, Jim! Calm down, Jim!” One day, Sadie started doing it, too. He soon realized that she calmed him better than he calmed himself. So he started rewarding her each time it happened. And he has had only one incident since: he dented a woman’s car with his fist on a day when he’d left Sadie at home.

May that bird live a long life! Curtsy: The Corner