High Bids Buy Rights to Squawkers : Parrots Confiscated From Smugglers Are Auctioned Off

It was an auction of the most exotic kind. Ninety-three parrots lined up in cages on a concrete truck dock at the American border crossing in Otay Mesa, the latest stop in a journey that began far away in the interiors of Mexico, Central America and South America.

Smuggled into the United States through a variety of cruel and ingenious methods--in hubcaps, inside the panels of car doors, under car hoods and in women’s purses--the birds were now for sale again. This time by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which stages auctions of exotic birds about every two months to make room for the many parrots that are constantly being confiscated along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Standing in front of the birds on Saturday were about 200 people. Some were professional dealers looking to buy birds cheap, others were couples seeking a pet for themselves or relatives, and still others were families whose giggly kids ran around the truck dock and tried to pester their parents into buying a bird.

And there was self-proclaimed “Bird Doctor” Dean E. Ewing, a veterinarian who makes house calls. He is a gregarious fellow who is more than happy to share his bird knowledge.

“Yup, just what I thought,” said Ewing, smiling slyly from under his cowboy hat after eyeing a bird with suspicion and then proclaiming that it was a red-headed Amazon. “The Mexicans painted it yellow. They’ll use bleach, dye or paint on them to get more money. They are very good at it. It fools most people.”

It’s a good bet, he says, that the bird’s previous owner--the one who got caught trying to smuggle it--thought he was in possession of a much more expensive double yellow-headed Amazon, the breed that sells for up to $1,000 in some American pet stores and which fetched $450 to $550 at the auction.

“In the 1970s, it was a fad to own a parrot,” Ewing said. “With condo living, people discovered birds as pets because they couldn’t have dogs and cats. Things kind of stopped for a while, but in 1984, buying birds became prevalent again.

“Besides, they talk. Well, not talk really, but they mimic what you say. Mine says ‘Good morning,’ and ‘Bye-bye,’ and when he sees our cat, he says, ‘Here, kitty. Here, kitty.’ ”

Bidding at the auction soon turned hectic and it didn’t take long for the amateurs to catch on. Walter and Marion Shanko, a couple from Cleveland, jumped into the bidding early. The first bird of the day was a Finsch’s Amazon, and they want it.

The Shankos didn’t hesitate and thought they’d won the bidding at $105, only to learn they’d lost out when their bid was contested by a professional bird breeder from Santee. They didn’t flub their next chance on another Finsch’s Amazon.

“We’re from Ohio, and we’re spending the winter at an RV park in San Ysidro,” said Marion after paying the $155. “He’s for our 5-year-old grandson back in Ohio. Actually, I don’t know anything about birds. Do you know if he’s a good one? I wasn’t going to go over $125 but I did. I’m all excited.”

Her excitement subsided a few minutes later when Walter put the bright green parrot in a large, black cage they bought in Mexico. When it began chewing on the cage the Shankos were told by people who had gathered around that the bird could be poisoned by the lead in the cage’s paint.

“We had to sandblast our cage to get the paint off,” a young woman told Marion, who began looking a bit stricken.

For every Walter and Marion Shanko there is a Kenneth and Shirley Bobrowsky, bird wholesalers from Mount Vernon, N.Y., who knew exactly what kind of bird they were getting. “We buy them here and sell them to pet shops,” said Shirley, talking hurriedly and paying for the birds in cash.

They bought 13, paying between $400 and $500 for most them, all the while being magnets for stares from the amateurs, who seemed to be outbid with frequency.

The couple, like many of the other professionals, bid mainly on the top-of-the-line parrots, the double yellow-headed Amazons and, “the Cadillacs of parrots,” the yellow-napped Amazons. These varieties are large, extremely colorful, and, perhaps most important, like to talk.

The trouble is they are liable to talk or make loud noises at the most inopportune times. That’s why smugglers go to great lengths to keep them quiet during the trip across the border.

Jon Grice, a Department of Agriculture animal health technician and inspector who served as the auctioneer on Saturday, said some smugglers feed the parrots corn soaked in tequila. The birds get drunk and fall asleep, silencing their squawking.

“Some people tape their beaks completely shut and then put them in a burlap sack. They look like a mummy when we find them,” said Grice in an interview a few days before the auction. He said that since Mexico outlawed the exportation of parrots three years ago, more and more people are trying to bring the birds to the United States illegally. The smugglers are fined based on the number of birds in their possession when they are caught.

After the birds are confiscated, they are placed in quarantine for six weeks and tested for Newcastle disease, a virulent form of pneumonia that kills other birds, particularly chickens.

“That’s a major threat to the poultry business,” Grice said. “It spreads like wildfire. In 1972 and ‘73, it cost $56 million to eradicate it . . . and it came from a parrot from Mexico.”

Psittacosis, also known as parrot fever, strikes humans and can lead to death if left untreated. Confiscated birds are fed a medicated diet for 30 days in an attempt to kill the parrot fever virus, Grice said, adding, “If they do have it, it will clean it up most of the time, though we can’t guarantee it.”

Back at the auction, David Kibodeaux, a general maintenance worker for the San Diego Unified Port District, did what few others dared, paying $540 for a yellow-napped Amazon, the second-highest winning bid of the day.

“We just wanted one for a pet . . . one that talks,” said Kibodeaux, who was accompanied by his wife, Alice, and 3-year-old son, David Jr., who viewed the action from a perch on his father’s shoulders.

“We got a young one. We didn’t exactly expect to pay this much,” Kibodeaux said. “Our anniversary is tomorrow and I wanted to get something nice. We’ve wanted a bird for a long time, so this was a good time to do it.”