Emotional rescue: Missouri man with bipolar disorder finds help

ST. LOUIS -- Say "hello" to Sadie the service parrot.

You say you've never heard of a service parrot?

You're not alone. Sadie could well be the only certified service parrot around. We've spent a month looking for another, but so far we've turned up not a one.

Sadie herself is new to the job, officially speaking. Her registration papers and ID card arrived from the Service Animal Registry of America only six weeks ago.

Nevertheless, the 2-year-old Congo African grey parrot has been enrolled in ongoing, on-the-shoulder, on-the-job training with James Eggers of Maplewood for more than a year.

The work has been a lifesaver for both of them.

Eggers has been diagnosed as bipolar with psychotic tendencies. He suffers from severe depression and potentially dangerous mood swings. Medication helps to control the problem.

Sadie controls it without any negative side effects.

On the positive side, Sadie is as much Eggers' best friend as she is his service bird.

Because Eggers is slightly hearing impaired, Sadie serves partly as a hearing aid. "When the phone rings, she automatically says 'Hello,'" Eggers says. "When someone is at the door, she asks, 'Who's there?'"

But Sadie's primary service job is to help Eggers "interact with people in a positive way." Because of his illness, that used to be difficult for Eggers. "But all the experiences I have had with people when Sadie has been with me have been very positive," Eggers says.

"Sadie definitely picks up on my moods. When I start having anxiety attacks, I start talking louder, and she tunes into that. She'll say, 'Jim, I love you. You're OK,' or, 'You're gonna be OK.' She'll tell me to relax. She's really pretty amazing," Eggers says.

Congo African grey parrots are, by definition, pretty amazing. The most intelligent of the parrot species, they have the intellectual capacity of a 5-year-old human and a gift for speech that goes beyond the parroting of words and sounds, at which they excel. They can understand the meaning of the words they speak, and hear, and they can combine words to express personal wants and needs -- as when Sadie says to Eggers, "Give me a kiss," and then starts making kissy sounds.

"It's one of her favorite things to say," Eggers said, "because she likes kisses. But she usually only does it in private. She's modest."

She's also "still somewhat of an introvert."

But she's nothing like she was when Eggers first got her.

He had been saving for an African grey parrot for nearly four years when a friend, Mike Willhite, who owns Varietees Bird Shop in Valley Park, put him onto Sadie.

According to Willhite's daughter Micki, who works at Varietees, Sadie had been hand-raised at the shop with three other greys, went home with a young man who never should have had her, "and came back plucking her feathers, which should not have been happening. She also had a very bad mouth; she was using language that was not good at all."

Willhite said that Sadie's feather-plucking was a sign that she wasn't getting a lot of attention -- "and greys need a lot of attention."

She looked so terrible, Eggers said, that he "almost broke out and cried." He said he'd take her home and work with her.

Eggers is a longtime animal lover and servant of a 15-year-old cat named Mr. Midnight, which he rescued from a Humane Society where he once worked.

"My friends at Varietees told me that they didn't think Sadie would bond with anyone. But she bonded with me within three days," said Eggers, who just as quickly became equally attached.

"Jim seems a lot happier now that he has Sadie," said Micki Willhite, who admits she had never heard of a service bird before Sadie. "He talks about her constantly. And Sadie has done a complete turn-around. She stopped feather plucking, and the last time we boarded her she didn't even use any colorful language. She and Jim are definitely good together."

Recognizing the positive effect Sadie had on him, Eggers invested in a special bird-carrier backpack -- like a canvas-covered bird cage so he could take her with him wherever he went out.

It wasn't until he was denied access to a bus that Eggers started researching how to certify her as a service animal.

Even though the Americans With Disabilities Act does not require that service animals be licensed or certified, Eggers felt that registering Sadie with the Service Animal Registry of America would make it easier for him to keep her by his side.

It has. "Before I had her ID card, we could pretty much only go out on the street. Now we can go into places. We can ride the bus. We can go just about anywhere," he says. "I pull out the card automatically and nip any confrontation in the bud."

"Sadie's like an American Express card," Eggers says. "I don't leave home without her."