Edgerton woman's love of parrots drives her final goal

Edgerton woman's love of parrots drives her final goal

By STACY VOGEL ( Contact ) Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009

EDGERTON — Sandi Meinholz worries about what will happen to the parrots when she's gone.

She knows the bird sanctuary she founded, Fine Feathered Friends, has a capable board, but she wants to make sure the group will be able to keep the Albion Township property forever.

Sandi has pancreatic cancer and knows her time might be limited, but she wants to live long enough for Fine Feathered Friends to pay off the mortgage on the property.

"I'm determined to last five to 10 years to get this done," she said. "It would be rare … (but) I've got a lot of support and people praying."

The group is kicking off its effort to raise the $250,000 needed with a fundraiser Saturday complete with pet psychic.

Sandi and her husband, Randy, have owned parrots for 50 years. When people found out the Meinholzes kept exotic birds, they started giving the couple parrots they no longer could or would care for, and the sanctuary was born, she said.

At one point, the couple kept 63 birds in their Madison condo before moving the sanctuary, first to a Madison warehouse and later to the Albion Township property.

Sandi and Randy own the property at 1570 County A and live in a home next door to the sanctuary building. They have been making the mortgage payments on the property, but they want to transfer ownership to the organization.

Fine Feathered Friends is one of three parrot sanctuaries in the state and the only no-kill one. Last week, it housed 75 parrots, from tiny parakeets to colorful McCaws to large and noisy cockatoos.

The sanctuary runs entirely on volunteers and receives no outside funding. It pays for the birds' care through donations, adoption fees and the sale of feed and care products.

The birds are amazing creatures, said Roxann Caracristi, board president. They can live to be 100 years old and are as smart as 5-year-old children. One of Sandi's birds can dial the telephone and has some phone numbers memorized. He can imitate Sandi's voice when he's trying to get Randy's attention.

But people often find the birds are more work than they can handle, Caracristi said. They can be messy and noisy and need lots of attention. They form strong bonds with their flocks in the wild, and domestic birds tend to substitute human owners for flock mates.

Cockatoos, especially, want to be held and cuddled all the time. Some become so upset from lack of attention that they peck holes in themselves, Caracristi said.

One cockatoo, Jeckyl, pecked himself to death after he was brought to the sanctuary. Caracristi still can't talk about him without crying.

After Jeckyl's death, the organization was able to add a special room for cockatoos in an addition this summer. Some of the birds live together in a colony so the birds can bond with each other instead of humans.

"I'm passionate about this," Caracristi said. "I don't want (what happened to Jeckyl) to happen ever again."

Some of the birds are no longer fit to be pets and probably will spend the rest of their lives at the sanctuary, Caracristi said.

The sanctuary hopes to create a memorial for the birds that are buried on the property. Sandi wants her ashes scattered at the memorial after she dies, and that's one reason she wants the sanctuary to go on forever, she said.

"I want to make sure it stays a sanctuary so I don't become farm fodder or something," she said.