Leave your heart in San Francisco, but take your damn Parrot Seed with you.

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I don’t write many fan letters, but I did send an e-mail after I saw the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. It is really a top-ranking documentary with a melancholy, touching story.

Here is a dispatch from Mark Bittner the minimalist, self-made St. Francis of the Coit Tower. This is the thing that typically happens when the masses get turned on to something cool and rare – a version of gate-crashing a Grateful Dead show.

There has been a large group of people feeding the parrots out in the open
in a public park here in San Francisco. My goal has always been to keep the
wild parrots wild and free, and the feeders have been undermining that as
well as endangering the flock by offering seeds to passersby–total
strangers–and encouraging them to feed the birds as well. Most people I
talk to understand why this is a bad idea. But not all do. (I will
eventually post on my web site a long essay that tells the full story. It
will also explain why I haven’t been talking about this. I’ll let you know
when the story goes up.) When discussions with the feeders deteriorated into
the usual Internet name calling, I went to the city where I found myself in
the awkward and unpleasant position of asking for a law forbidding the
feeding of the parrots in city parks. Yesterday the law was passed by the
Board of Supervisors 10-1. This is a great relief to me and Judy. I’ve been
distracted by my worry about the flock (at least one bird was probably
nabbed–possibly more), which has made work on my new book difficult at
times. (I’m about 70% through a first draft now.) As I say, I’ll let you
know when my story about this law goes up on my web site. Our thanks to all
the supervisors who voted for this, and to all those who helped by writing
letters to the Board of Supervisors. I especially want to thank Board
President Aaron Peskin who took on a task that created a lot of flak for
him. But he understood why I wanted to do this and he agreed that it was
necessary. One last thing: You don’t need to worry about the flock. The
birds don’t need the extra food. They get enough food from what grows here
in the city.

Frisco’s Parrots want a local organic diet too.

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