R.I.P. DOA

by Bruce Schimmel

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was supposed to be dead eight years ago, when he first arrived at City Paper. An experiment slated to fail.

Arriving here, the bird was pronounced DOA -- Dead On Arrival. The date of its expected demise became the subject of an office betting pool. But within days, the cash amassed for the pool mysteriously disappeared, thus setting a pattern in the bird's life. But I am getting ahead of myself.

When I discovered DOA, eight years ago, he was the pet of the family next door. He was then known as Sweetie, but he was not. Left alone in the dining room, Sweetie would scream whenever anyone came in, and despite what you did, would not shut up.

This made evening meals challenging, and led to the family re-christening Sweetie as Shithead, clearly indicating that he was on the way out.

So I brought Shithead, née Sweetie, screaming and squawking into a large central room at CP that housed both the production department and the newsroom.

At the time, our office was somewhat more communal, its atmosphere less refined. As publisher then, I tried a number of interesting experiments on the human beings who worked there, which I dressed up as innovative business practices.

The bird's incessant screams thankfully gave way to a softer stream, a burble that sounded like a badly tuned radio. But his keeper at the time, Sandy, herself a quiet person, noticed several distinct words in the bird's babbling. Words like shit, damn, motherfucker and piss were clearly heard, sotto voce, coming from the bird's mouth. We began to wonder if Sandy was as demure as she seemed.

Beloved by all, "DOA, the potty-mouthed parakeet" was then elected mascot of a new magazine which we published called Earshot, and which DOA also outlived.

More recently, DOA barely survived the ministrations of a classifieds manager who deemed the bird "inappropriate." He's gone now, too.

Eventually, DOA moved into a back room, into the demi-monde known as Toni's Love Shack. Toni handles adult classifieds, and DOA has quieted down in recent years, some say because he's now got a friend in his cage, known as M.C.

I learned of DOA's recent demise from an e-mail that Wendy, the classifieds director, sent to the entire staff.

"We took him to the vet this morning," writes Wendy, "and unfortunately, DOA had a large tumor in his abdomen. Because of the severity of the cancer, he was put to sleep.

"We will all miss him very much.

"On a lighter note, M.C. is doing well. He's going to be lonely for awhile, so stop in and cheer him along! He'll need a lot of extra love!"

Maybe DOA, the potty-mouthed parakeet -- a.k.a. Shithead and Sweetie -- wasn't such a goofy idea after all.

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