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Squirt, foreground, and one of her buddies happily sit on the shoulder of owner Karen Semones. Photo by Jean Farley

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This business is for the birds

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

It’s hard not to have a grin on your face after you spend a few minutes with Karen Semones.
Semones, a Quaker parrot breeder in Austinville, has an infectious laugh and exudes unbridled joy when she gets to talking about her birds.
Sporting a shirt last Friday that proclaimed Hakuna Matata – meaning “no worries” for anybody that missed “The Lion King” – Semones embodied that mantra as she animatedly detailed the inner workings of the bird business.
Yep, it was smiles all around.
Until Semones began recalling the day Squirt flew away.
The story of Scooter’s Aviary – the name of Semones’ business – begins about a decade ago with a request from a young girl, Whitney Whittington, Semones’ daughter.
Whitney, now a senior at Fort Chiswell High School, was just a youngster at the time hoping for a pet parrot.
Well, at least that was her second choice.
“Actually she wanted a monkey and we said no way,” Semones said.
Semones actually also thought a parrot would be way out of the family’s price range.
She let Whitney call a local woman who had one for sale, though, and to its surprise the family found out the price wasn’t exorbitant.
The family thus soon welcomed Scooter into its home and fell in love with the talkative bird.
“He loved Pepsi,” Semones recalled about her first Quaker parrot.
Unfortunately Scooter only lived about 18 months after becoming Whitney’s pet.
Semones, though, was hooked.
By 2004, Semones had decided that she wanted to make birds her business.
She and her husband, Rodney, drove down to Louisiana to pick up two Quaker parrots, a male and a female, to start a breeding business.
And less than two months later, in early June, out hatched Squirt – Semones’ first baby parrot.
Squirt was born with one crippled leg, but otherwise was a healthy young parrot.
When Squirt was about five weeks old, she hopped up on Semones as she headed outside.
And then it happened.
The event that darkened even Semones’ ever-sunny disposition.
Squirt had never flown before, but she decided then was the time to test her wings.
“She just went off my shoulder and up, up and away,” Semones recalled. “She was gone and beautiful.”
Beautiful, but…
“As sweet as it was to watch this baby parrot’s first flight, it was equally as bitter to realize…I just lost my bird!” Semones wrote in a letter about Squirt’s unexpected soar.
Enter Parrott.
Pauline Parrott.
After Semones’ friend Sissy Crigger of the Browntown area of Austinville initially spotted Squirt in a wooded area across the street, it was the aptly named Parrott who was able to catch Squirt when she tumbled out of a tree.
“[Semones] was going to stay in the woods all night and I wasn’t about to,” said Parrott, who lives in the Stringtown area of Wytheville.
“So I caught that bird.”
Fast forwarding back to the present day, Squirt remains an integral part of the family, which has now grown to include multiple Quaker parrots and other birds.
A few birds treated more as pets like Squirt live in Semones’ home, while the rest of the approximately 20-member flock comfortably reside in an aviary on the family’s property next door to Poplar Camp River of Life Ministries.
Even as Semones’ business has grown since Squirt’s arrival four years ago, she said she remains dedicated to each individual bird.
“I never want to be that big that I would do away with a hurt bird,” she said.
Semones said expanding the business, though, has taken work.
Her kitchen table Friday was covered with a variety of seeds and “Bird Talk” magazines.
“We have studied diligently,” she said. “It’s like working in a nursing home. You’re always changing the food, come down and change the water a couple of times.”
Crigger said Semones gives her birds the royal treatment.
“I don’t think she’d feed them nothing she wouldn’t eat herself,” she said.
“Yeah, I would,” Semones countered with a laugh, despite having just sampled an oat from a bird feed mix. “I wouldn’t eat them pellets.”
Finding fellow bird lovers to buy her parrots isn’t difficult, Semones said.
She advertises the parrots online and in various publications, drawing people from around the country who come to Austinville to purchase a feathered friend.
“They’re like Girl Scout cookies – they sell their selves,” Semones said. “They’re not feeding us, but they’re feeding themselves. And they’re also beginning to pay their light bill. By next year maybe they’ll be feeding us all. We can hope.”
With a lot of attention Friday, Squirt and the other parrots in Semones’ home did more squawking than talking.
But Semones and her friends said that’s not usually the case.
“When she’s ignoring them, they’ll talk up a storm,” Crigger said.
Squirt and her buddies did get out a few words, though, demonstrating their charm.
Semones’ said most Quaker parrots begin talking when they’re around nine weeks old and then don’t stop.
In addition to selling her birds, Semones also uses them for educational purposes.
She said she visited Jackson Memorial Elementary School last year and hopes to teach children a love for birds at a young age.
Despite her own obvious adoration for the Quaker parrots, Semones said she still couldn’t peg them as her absolute favorite.
“I just love birds,” she said. “I love all God’s creatures. I love His flowers, too…I just like them and I never grew out of it and I hope I never do.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .