Polly want a grief counselor?

“What is grief if not love persevering?”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe unexpectedly delivers this profound line at the end of “WandaVision,” reframing heartbreak as a positive continuation of feelings we as humans signed up for. Grief requires active participation to stay alive, and to cut it off prematurely is to deny love’s importance to us. But all too often, we’re asked to put grief on hold – to arrange affairs, to fight over property, to get back to work or the worst yet . . . to move on because the world doesn’t deem your grief as legitimate or worthy. Pet owners know this injustice well.

The documentary “Parrot Kindergarten” explores what happens when a parrot named Ellie chooses to grieve. While the overall film follows her journey using a tablet – an AAC device to be precise – to communicate, the bond she has with her owner/human mother Jen Taylor-O’Connor also takes center stage. Part of their relationship involves discussing Ellie’s so-called sisters, parrots named Isabelle and Tillie, and how to help them.

One day, however, Ellie uses the tablet to recall another sister, the bird Lily who had died several years ago. Ellie’s insistence on remembering Lily – by looking at photos of her, requesting conversations about her and even telling complete strangers about her – unlocks a grief that her owner wasn’t prepared for.

“It’s like the worst pain on earth,” Taylor-O’Connor told Salon in a Zoom interview. “I think grief is the worst, and sometimes when it’s not acknowledged by the public, you have to apologize for your grief, but then that makes it even more complicated.”

Salon spoke to Taylor-O’Connor about the documentary, Ellie’s talents and bossiness, the Parrot Kindergarten school for animal communication and grief.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Something I found really compelling when I first started following your account online, even before the documentary, were the conversations Ellie was having about missing Lily. What were your first thoughts when Ellie started initiating these conversations?

Jen Taylor-O’Connor: Lily died during the pandemic. There was a lot going on. I didn’t have a lot of time to process her grief and her death. And [Ellie started bringing Lily up] three years later. I added a grief menu to her speech board, not really thinking she would necessarily use it, just kind of adding it. And immediately she went to it, like the very first day it was available, and she pressed these things. I was taken aback, because I honestly wasn’t ready to have any kind of conversation about it. I didn’t know what to do. I was a little bit confused and overwhelmed and surprised by my own feelings. I guess because I wasn’t expecting it. It became this couple months-long of us grieving together with communication, because we shared in the ability to communicate about our grief, since she initiated my grief process.

Can you walk me through the AAC menu for this grief board?

Taylor-O’Connor: She has a menu that opens two submenus that says “time” and “remember.” Time has just basically like time stuff, time sequences, and for “remember” I had pictures. I had a picture of Lily and of Moonlight [another parrot who had passed], of our old house, things from the past. Then she could select different things like “talk about” or “look at pictures,” or affect: “like” or “no like.” So, she went there, and she pressed “Lily,” and she said, “talk about feelings.” And she also did her little want signal [demonstrates with her hand a parrot foot grabbing.]

It’s very emotional, but I also part of me is just like, well, what about Moonlight? Does Ellie not care about him?

Taylor-O’Connor: She’ll bring up Moonlight. She was very close to Lily for like 10 years. She didn’t know a life without Lily, but she also asks for Moonlight a lot too, and we have pictures of both of them in the room. So she asks for both of them honestly.

What does it look like when a bird grieves? It may be different from what we’d expect.

Taylor-O’Connor: Her body language actually goes into a pain body language. Her eyes flatten, like almond shape, which is a like a pain signal. And her feathers, kind of like floor a little bit. And she looks like she’s in pain as she talks about it. And something else that’s really interesting is that anytime she meets new people, she tells them about Lily. Even yesterday, she had the people who are caring for her while I travel, who brought out the speech board, and she was kind of like chatting, and then she’s She pressed “Lily, like, remember Lily.” Like she wanted them to know that she had a sister. And when she met my boyfriend, she was like, I had a sister; her name was Lily.

This unlocked something in you. I don’t want to give it away, but what did you as a human learn about grieving from Ellie?

Taylor-O’Connor: Oh, my God. It helped me. First I grieved, right? I had to go through my grief process with Lily, and then I created a potential fiction about the afterlife for Ellie, because it’s not in me to tell her there’s nothing afterwards. So as far as she’s concerned – and maybe this is true – when we pass, we’re all together, we’re happy, we’re warm, you know? And I thought of all her favorite things, like she loves pumpkins and she likes summer. So it was like, “When we die, we go to a forever pumpkin house. Like, all our favorite things in there, we’re all together. Everybody’s together.” And I’m in science, and here I am telling my bird a narrative that, you know, I hope is true. I hope it’s true. But this is challenging, but it also made me realize how profoundly animals grieve each other, and how shocking it must be to have someone part of your life every single day be gone. . . . seems to me potentially, really intense. Having an outlet for animals to be able to express grief, to be able to communicate about grief, be able to look at pictures again, to be able to share in conversation around it is probably very important and meaningful for them.

The impact that these animals have on our lives and the need for us to grieve, which is something that I notice, isn’t always afforded to humans with their pets or their animal companions. Can you talk a little bit about that and that bias?

Taylor-O’Connor: It’s awful, but when you lose a pet, the world sees it like you’ve lost maybe a quarter of a human, or a half of a human. But it’s not really, it’s like the same thing as losing a significant part of your family and your life. And the truth is that a lot of people who have pets, and I know from the bird world, a lot of people who have birds grieve their birds for decades, right? If something happens to them, it’s like losing a child in so many ways, because our pets are often like our children. So there is this kind of bias that you’re supposed to get over it really fast and you just get another one. And the truth is not that that’s not the experience. People sometimes really, really, really grieve their pets.

And this is something that one of the reasons they started Parent Kindergarten, to have community so that people understand one another, like the grief that we have or the pain that we can sometimes carry. And recently, I had a gathering for women, and it included a specialist in grief, because I know it can be very painful and profound.

(Covetower) “Parrot Kindergarten” star Ellie the parrot eyes a tablet with weather-related words displayed on a screen

A recurring theme we see in the film is that humans consistently are skeptical that any other animal even feels, much less communicates. Could you discuss this bias and what that means for studying animal cognition and behavior?

Taylor-O’Connor: So there is definitely a bias that humans are incredible, and nobody else can be as incredible as us. And so you’re always, I say, I told this to [director Amy Herdy] but I feel as though I stand at the tip of a needle and and one part of it is social media and sharing about animal intelligence in a public way. And the other part of it is science, and in science, I can’t say the word “words.” I can’t say that she understands things. Just this past year, we get to say she communicates.

On the scientific side of things, the bias is heavy against what animals can do versus potentially what humans can do. I’m not sure it needs to be that heavy, but I do think it’s not bad to have some sort of proving that needs to go on, before we assume things just because. I think that assuming can be hurtful too. I think that if we assume our animals understand us, or if we assume things that without proofs that that can cause its own damage. Honestly, I’ve seen it. So the bias that exists just really means that we have to be very careful in taking small steps to show evidences. At this point, Ellie has had 13 scientific tests. And she’s passed all of them, amazingly,

How many words does Ellie have now, not counting like the past tense of a verb or something?

Taylor-O’Connor: Let’s see. She has, I think 820 icons. They’re options on her screen. We don’t call them words. So she has options, and then she has selections that she makes. Some of them are repeating. So I think that her vocabulary of options, or the number options she has, is probably around 500 to 600. The way that we set up her speech board is that she can have an entire conversation or interaction on each board.  And then her speech board, right now has over 1,500 options. And then again, like a lot of them, are repeating.

Obviously, Ellie is unique, but at the same time, is there something about the Goffin’s cockatoo that  makes her maybe more susceptible to being able to pick up communication and things like that?

Taylor-O’Connor: You know, they’re very busy. I think that that’s some of the challenge with her. Is that Goffin’s cockatoos are just a zoomy. People think cockatoos are huge, and usually they are, but you get a little Goffin’s cockatoo that’s compact and zoomy and brilliant. I was just recording them one time, but I was getting some stuff together, and Isabelle is sitting on her some chair outside, and Ellie has a different chair. Isabelle is just sitting there, and she’s looking, and Ellie is like – zoom, zoom, zoom – she’s underneath the chair and on the side, and over here. It’s just like, fast-forward, and she doesn’t stop moving. And I do think that Goffin’s cockatoos just really have a lot of energy to burn, and they’re really smart. Birds are all across the board, really smart, but Goffin’s cockatoos are very zoomy. But I think that that makes her like Goffin’s a little bit more, needing the challenge to settle them down.

Maybe that’s why she likes to see you run?

Taylor-O’Connor: [Laughs] Yes

(Covetower) “Parrot Kindergarten”: Jen Taylor-O’Connor with her parrots Isabelle, Ellie and Tillie

What are Ellie’s favorite things to talk about and do?

Taylor-O’Connor: Oh, she’s so sweet. So everyone should know she had a sister. She loves movement, so she’ll boss everybody around and tell them to run and jump and swim. We did a retreat last weekend, and I think there were probably 15 women in the room, and Ellie was like “jump.” And everybody was like jumping, listening to music, dancing, running. So she loves movement.

She seems to express a lot about her sisters. We call them sisters. So she’ll let me know what their needs are like, “Mom, touch Isabelle,” or “book with Isabele,” or a reminder that I need to move slowly for Isabelle, she’ll tell me, like, “help with Tillie” or whatever. She really takes her communication role, like primary communicator, very seriously. She likes to boss me around. She lets me know if any lights are missing. Yesterday, we were out in the aviary, and the aviary floor needs a little bit of sweeping after the after the event we had. She was, like, “Mom, mom, sweep floor. Clean, clean the floor.” Like, OK. It seems like that that kind of like the role of being a little bossy and advocating for her sisters and making sure everything’s moving properly.

Does Ellie have any sort of sense of wordplay?

Taylor-O’Connor: She hasn’t really had a lot of opportunity to, for example, do wordplay, but there was one thing that she said – she’s actually done this a couple times that is a little bit like mischievous. So when she’s mad at a sister or somebody, she’ll call them “slow.”

The ultimate Goffin’s cockatoo insult . . .

Taylor-O’Connor: On the podcast the other day, I had some tech stuff going on. And she was like, “slow, slow.” And so on this one particular day, I took Tillie out for a walk, and she was mad at Tillie because I took Tillie out for a walk and I didn’t take Ellie. So obviously this is Tillie’s fault [from Ellie’s perspective]. And, so she was like, “Tillie slow, Tillie slow. No, like Tillie. Tillie slow.” And then I was like, “Ellie, we can’t do this. Do you want me to call you slow? We need to be very kind.” I kind of lectured her about being kind with our words. “Tillie is fast, and you’re fast and you’re fast, everyone’s fast.” And then she goes, “Ellie like slow.” and then she does this little laugh, she goes like “heh.”

We often see this in the documentary, Ellie just starts doing things on her own without you prompting her. What is something that she’s asked for you didn’t expect?

Taylor-O’Connor: My fish Libby died like two years ago, and Ellie did two things. They all did two things the very next day. So I told them, because they’d seen Libby before, but she wasn’t living in there anymore. I was crying. They don’t see me cry-cry that often. So I was cry-crying, and it was like the next day, they all made sure somebody [a parrot] was on the phone with me the entire day. I would do one-hour slots, and then I’ll hang up, and then I’ll do an hour slot and I’ll hang up, so they’re not stuck with me. So as soon as I left their room, Isabelle called me, and it was on for an hour, and I left. So Isabelle four times, every minute, and then I had a meeting at six o’clock, so I couldn’t answer when she called back. So obviously, they all knew I wasn’t on the phone. Ellie called me 29 times in half an hour to try to get through to me and make sure I was OK. And when I came in that night, she had opened her gallery, and it was a picture of Libby the fish, and she kept saying “fish.” Like she pressed “fish,” “talk about.” She was saying, “Do you want to talk about Libby?” Because, you know, I always ask her when she brings up Lily, “Do you want to talk about Lily or Moonlight?” She wanted to comfort me in grief, and this is the best way she could figure out. They were so sweet and so precious; they didn’t want me to be alone.

Has Ellie said anything that surprised you about her thought process?

Taylor-O’Connor: She knows when Isabelle needs something more than I do. I think I’m pretty clued into my birds. I love them. We spend a lot of time together. But when Isabelle was sick, I didn’t know she was sick. This is the second time, and Ellie had this huge conversation about, “Isabelle broken sick sick sick Mom.” And three days later, we found out she was really sick. And then, while she was sick, she was sick for almost two months.

And if Ellie told me that Isabelle wanted something, and I went over and did it, almost without exception, Isabelle wanted it. I don’t know them like they know each other. I trust their words so much at this point that if Ellie tells me something’s wrong, I’m like, something’s wrong. I just really, like, I can’t imagine mothering without their help, because they’re just so in tune to each other.

Ellie is like your interpreter

Taylor-O’Connor: She really is, yeah. I didn’t think of it that way, but that’s exactly it. Like she’s the interpreter. She just lets me know.

What does this agency do for animals if they can communicate in this way?

Taylor-O’Connor: There’s just so much power in being able to communicate . . .  It gives them the ability to ask for an apple that’s in the fridge. It gives them the ability to tell me that they don’t like something, and I can adjust it. It lets them tell me when they’re sick. And then, I mean, it’s fun, right? There’s tons and tons of fun, but just being able to voice like that, “Light is out. It really means a lot to me. Could we turn the light on? ” Or the anxiety of of death, like Ellie’s has this multi-year death process. She asked me recently, “Can you die while you’re feeling good?” And I was like, “Oh, Ellie.”

I’ve definitely seen her ask about cancer many times.

Taylor-O’Connor: Oh, I know, I know. She hurt her foot the other day. She knows now things aren’t cancer, but she’s like, limping a little bit, and she’s like, “Cancer!” I was like, “No, no, not cancer. She’s like, “OK . . . cancer?!”

She’s kind of like a hypochondriac.

Taylor-O’Connor: She is. She’s this little hypochondriac, I mean, but it makes sense. Yeah, her sister died of cancer, but also it’s like who would Ellie be if she didn’t have these words? Can you just imagine if she had all these thoughts in her head and she couldn’t say them? They’re all like this, they’re all really smart.

I’ve seen you read your birds pictures books. What other media do they access?

Taylor-O’Connor: They do watch cartoons. One of the reasons I call myself mom is because I decided early on that we would put them in a cultured kind of setting where they could relate to the children and mothers and grandmothers and sisters and all the media that can exist. They love “Curious George,” “Cloud Babies,” “Little Kingdom,” “Peppa Pig.” If they haven’t watched cartoons in a couple days, they’ll let you know they need their cartoons.

So they have been exposed to this idea of story. And then I also did teach the story arc, right? So you there’s a character and another character, and then there’s a character conflict, and the character feelings about the conflict, and then something happens, and there’s resolution. So they’ve learned this kind of story arc generally as  a direct association. So I think they’re trying to use it. “And then, and then,” oh my god, they’ll be telling you a story, and you’re like, “And then what happened?” all the time.

I was happy to see a discussion of Animal Kindergarten. What is the status of that?

Taylor-O’Connor: We had an inter-species workshop for a couple years, which is amazing, and they learned a lot of information. Right now, I have fish and cats that I’m working with. We’re teaching them on their speech board to talk. Oh my god, they’re so funny and cute and sweet. They are a little bit like Ellie. I have a Blossom, and she likes the hard things, whatever she’s working on that’s hard, she’ll go to it, and she wants to practice it and do it together. So I guess the status is that hopefully in the future, we’re going to have this available across the board, for many animals, but I like for science to lead us.

If people were looking to get one of their learners started, what do you recommend? Do they need to get an AAC device? Do they need to get what sort of setup?

Taylor-O’Connor: We have PK, Parrot Kindergarten, and you can join with any animal, and they will coach you. Whatever animal you have, we have many modalities. So the cats learned “yes” “no” really easily with little cards. The fish learned “yes,” “no,” really easily with little cards. So we have cards, we have AAC devices that are like technology-based. You can do preference training.

What is next for you?

Taylor-O’Connor: Ellie’s path is she’s teaching herself uppercase letters right now. She taught herself numbers. She realized the higher the number, the more treats you get. She’s very motivated to get that nine down. She got the eight down. I gave her a big plate of eight treats. And she was like, “Oh, this may be even too much for me. That’s a big bite!” Like, what does she do with story? What does she do with letters? What does she do with words? She’s starting to put her letters together and to express things. So she wrote J, U, P, E, L, L, the other day, and it’s just like, “Jump Ellie,” “think,” or  “Call dad. It seems like she’s writing.

Anything you want to add?

Taylor-O’Connor: The most important thing, I think, is doing this hand-in-hand with following the science. We have amazing collaborators. They love the girls. We’re really, careful about making sure the girls have a good experience, but knowing as like a checkpoint as you go like that, it’s lining up scientifically and lining up and lining up, I think is really valuable for animals to keep them safe, ensure their work is authentic.

Also, the filmmakers were incredible with Ellie. She loves them. She still calls them some of them are some of her best friends. So one of the most beautiful things about making this film is that it wasn’t some people who showed up and then were gone. They stayed, part of her journey and her life, and I’m so thankful. She loves them.

“Parrot Kindergarten” is in select theaters Nov. 3.