Hatched on this day in 1933 was Cookie, the Pink Cockatoo, who was to achieve fame as the oldest living cockatoo and the oldest living parrot in the world. When he died in 2016, peacefully at home – the Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago – he had achieved the remarkable age of 83, and was the sole survivor from the zoo's original collection, formed in 1934. He was suffering from osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, the latter perhaps caused by his being fed only seeds for his first 40 years (as was then standard), and was living a quiet life in the zoo keeper's office, making public appearances only on special occasions, such as his annual birthday celebrations (no doubt that is a birthday cake in the picture above). In the 1950s Cookie had been introduced to a female bird of his own species, but he rejected her as she was 'not nice to him'. He was memorialised in a bronze sculpture at the zoo, which makes him look rather like a chicken – and a volume of poems for 'middle-grade children' by one Barbara Gregorich titled Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes. It does indeed.
I'd like to know how anyone established he was the oldest living cockatoo. I don't know if you've ever visited Australia but there are enormous numbers of cockatoos roaming about, the hooligans of the avian world. Remarkably well run though Australia is, if the cockatoos there have all had their birth dates registered I'll be v. surprised ZMKC
ReplyDeleteQuite so, Zoe. As with all animals, the record holders are always in captivity, but it's probably the only place they could survive so long. I doubt there are many senile arthritic cockatoos with brittle bones flying about in the Bush.
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