When I was assigned to go to Mercer Island to investigate Denise’s Parrot Place, I tried very hard to get out of it.
I’m no stranger to parrot lovers. I grew up in Florida, where parrot people were everywhere. But they were all hoarders or catastrophically elderly, so I was never interested in the scene. It’s no coincidence that the word used by John Milton to describe the capital of hell in Paradise Lost—pandemonium—is the same word used to describe a group of parrots. As I voyaged to Mercer Island, I secretly feared I’d get a rare tropical bird flu.
Inconspicuously located behind a busy Starbucks, Denise’s Parrot Place could be a dentist’s office or an H&R Block. A person passing the building wouldn’t suspect it houses a colony of screeching monsters. The only signal of what’s inside is a neon-green sign in the window: “Exotic Birds!”
