Ribbon, the Psychic Macaw


It was during the sixties and I had started working at Busch Gardens. I'd raised a number of peacocks and pheasants on Ellicott Street, growing up, so the Bird Gardens section of the park was perfect for me.

After about a year I became one of the M.C.'s of the Parrot Show. Following each show the parrots were put in their cages. The M.C. and their assistants would escort the bird show audience down a sidewalk, a short distance away from the amphitheater, to a posing area. This is where the guests would have from four to six beautiful Macaws placed on their arms by the bird attendants for souvenir photographs. There were Scarlet Macaws, Blue and Golds, Catalinas, which are a cross between the two just mentioned, as well as Greater Green Wings. The most beautiful of all, in my opinion, were the Scarlet Macaws.

Ribbon was a Scarlet Macaw. He was vivid red and had a long, red, slender tail over two-ft. long. To compare him with any of the other birds was like comparing the Indie 500 with a potato sack race.

One day I was scheduled to M.C. a bird show after I returned from lunch. I was driving down Busch Boulevard on my way back to work and was stopped in traffic. The car in front of me was a blue and white Chevy station wagon with the back window down.

Riding in the back were three kids in their early to mid teens. The oldest was a boy about fifteen, wearing the strangest shirt I'd ever seen. That's why this car made an impression on me. The tee shirt had a big spiral of beautiful, bright colors covering the entire front. I thought it was pretty spectacular. It was the first tie-dyed shirt I'd ever seen. Practically nobody had even heard of them. Being an artist, I made note of everything about it. I looked at the license plate and they were from California.

That explains it.

At that point the traffic started moving and I drove back to the Gardens and the next bird show.

As I was M.C.ing the show, who do you think I saw sitting in the audience? The "California, tie-dyed family". They weren't hard to miss. They, of course, didn't know me at all.

After the show, as usual, everybody made their way to the posing area. When the California family got there I started to put Ribbon on the arm of the boy who was wearing the magic shirt. But I stopped short. I put Ribbon's beak up to my ear as if he was whispering something to me.

"Wait, he's telling me something," I said. "He's asking if you miss California."

The family was in disbelief. They said, "We are from California."

I said, still "listening" closely to Ribbon, "Are you in a blue and white Chevy station wagon?"

The kids said, "What! Man! How does he know that?! This blows me away!"

After they got their pictures, I told them that I had been stuck behind them in traffic and the shirt was why I remembered them. For years after that every time I'd see a tie-dyed shirt I'd remember that family and how much fun we had with "Ribbon, the Psychic Macaw".

Lash Out Loud