Polly wanna home: Delco woman on parrot rescue mission

Margaret Ouali lives in a four-bedroom, five-birdroom house in Upper Darby with 10 of her own parrots, a dozen or so rescues up for adoption, and a man who has to be the most understanding husband in Delaware County.

"I tell him, 'This isn't your house; it's a bird house,' " Ouali says, laughing before quickly adding that husband Ali, an electrical engineer, is so kindhearted that "even the meanest birds just love him."

Ouali rescued and found homes for 354 parrots, parakeets, and finches last year, and more than 3,000 birds since she started her nonprofit Jojo the Grey Adoption and Rescue for Birds in 2002 - the only parrot rescue in the Philadelphia area.

Big, toy-filled cages that serve as parrot condos dominate her living room, dining room, and two bedrooms, while her office houses a quarantine cage for new arrivals awaiting veterinary exams.

Ouali is in constant motion, room to room, cage to cage, conversing with birds, holding them, affectionately ordering them to exercise their wings.

"I am known for taking in birds with critical issues," she says, cuddling up to her huge macaw Romeo, 19, who behaves like a red-feathered puppy, giving her big-beak kisses. He roams cage-free from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

"I'll get birds that are mutilated with big wounds, broken wings, broken legs. They're like lost children."

Ouali, 50, says she relates to the abandoned, damaged birds, because she herself was once a lost child.

"Both my parents had issues, so I had to go into the foster-care system from 9 to 16," says the Kensington-born Ouali, who has two grown daughters. "I was raised by nuns in a St. Joseph's home for unwanted girls in Germantown. From all the stuff the nuns taught me, I look at these birds . . . and I think, 'OK, now it's my time to give them what they need.' "

No matter how acute those needs, no parrots are turned away by Ouali, although she's severely allergic to cockatoo feather dander. She tries to get rescued cockatoos adopted as quickly as possible, and all birds placed within 30 days.

She accompanied the Delaware County SPCA on a hoarding case and found Buddy, 27, a male cockatoo left without food for so long that he was trying to eat his cage bars. Buddy had blood poisoning from the lead-based paint and metal fragments in his system, requiring a $2,000 surgery. She nursed him back to health and found him a new home.

"She does a great job with the most extreme cases," says Leonard Donato, a Radnor Veterinary Hospital veterinarian who has treated Ouali's rescues for 12 years. "I've told her: 'You get these birds in and they look like a total mess. You give them food. You give them water. You give them love. And the results are pretty incredible.' "

Ouali charges adoption fees of $50 to $350 for birds worth hundreds to thousands of dollars more on the retail market.

"Most people think they're getting the bird for nothing," she says. But fees and donations are her only source of income to pay for food and medical care. "Last year, our vet bills were $14,000, but we only got $9,867.20 in donations. I pinch my pennies to pay the rest."

While some of Ouali's rescues are big parrots that outlived their owners - macaws can live 100 years; Amazons, African Grays, and cockatoos average 50 - many are from abusive situations, like SPCA hoarding cases.

Ouali named her pet project after her first rescue, Jojo, a 30-year-old Congo African Grey parrot whose captors had cut off his wings with machetes when they trapped him in the wild decades earlier. (The wild-caught African Grey parrot trade, which was decimating the species, was banned in the United States in 1992.)

"When I rescued Jojo in 2002," she says, "he was a very phobic bird," petrified of men, uninterested in toys. But years of kindness have calmed him. Though he'll never be able to fly, he seems to enjoy watching his roommates winging around the house. And he talks up a storm.

"African Greys are very smart birds who can take words and make whole sentences," Ouali continues. "A lot of African Greys are what we call 'closet talkers' because they'll talk when you're out of the room. I have six, and I can hear them having a conversation: 'Night night.' 'I love you.' 'I'll see you tomorrow.' 'Give me a kiss.' "

Capria, a 25-year-old macaw, was saved from a bare cage with no toys and none of the human companionship on which captive parrots thrive.

"Her wings started to atrophy and bond to her body," Ouali recalls. "If you're stuck in a cage and don't have anything to do, why should you use your wings? . . . She will never be able to open them fully."

As soon as she arrived for the rescue, Ouali felt an attachment to Capria.

"When you saw your wife for the first time," she asks, "do you remember the love that was in your eyes? That's the feeling I get with Capria."

In addition to affection, fresh fruit and vegetables are keys to keeping everyone healthy and happy.

When the sun comes up, her own 10 birds - the only ones allowed out and about - are "sitting there waiting for breakfast," says Ouali, who was a restaurant cook and manager for 15 years before birds became her life's work.

She slices up fresh fruits and vegetables to add everyone's pellet mix and nuts. "Some of these birds that come into rescue don't even know what a fruit and a vegetable is," Ouali says. "I also make blueberry pancakes. Oh my God! They love my blueberry pancakes!"

Before rushing off on yet another rescue mission - "Four big birds from Delaware!" - Ouali pauses to reflect on her passion for parrots.

"These birds are not pets," she says. "They are companions. They live as long as or longer than humans. They are a lifetime commitment."

geringd@phillynews.com610-313-8109