'Are you my sweetie?' For lorikeet ZaZu, life's a treat

Animal lover alters world for one colorful pet

Mira Tweti tends to ZaZu in the balcony aviary she built for the rainbow lorikeet at her apartment. She lets the bird fly free inside, despite the mess that comes with the territory. (Anne Cusack/ Los Angeles Times)

LOS ANGELES - ZaZu hangs upside down on the curtains of the apartment window, surveying all that is his: the jumble of colorful plastic balls, the climbing ladders, the panoramic view of the ocean. And the woman standing before him, cooing.

"Whaddya say, cutie? Are you my sweetie?" she asks.

The 3-year-old rainbow lorikeet - a small parrot - is a melange of colors.

His head is a deep cobalt blue, his torso a flame red with black stripes. His back and his sweeping tail - "keet" denotes "long-tailed" - are green.

ZaZu revs up for takeoff with a feathery whir that sounds like a toy helicopter and soars past his owner and out of the room.

Usually he follows her. "I'm the flock leader," says Mira Tweti, whose last name is pronounced "tweetie," a perfect coincidence for a bird owner. (It's Moroccan. She didn't make it up.)

She used to be a cat person. Now Mira Tweti is a bird person. She has sacrificed much of her two-bedroom Los Angeles apartment to ZaZu, fashioning a mini-rain-forest-cum-bird-playground on her spacious balcony.

Once a film publicist, Tweti has written extensively on bird and environmental issues. Her just-released book, "Of Parrots and People," offers a portrait of the avians that is alternately serious and quirky. It also examines the often brutal practices of the parrot trade, legal and illegal.

Of the roughly 350 species of parrots indigenous to the world's tropical zones, a few dozen are lorikeets, distinguished by their long, tapered tails. Lorikeets such as ZaZu - who is 11 inches from head to tail - live about two decades, sometimes longer. Some African grays and Amazons can live into their 70s. Macaws and cockatoos have been known to live beyond 80.

Tweti's devotion to parrots has led her to a "Born Free" paradox: The pet she loves is a wild animal and shouldn't be a pet at all, she believes. "It's like putting a human being in solitary confinement," says Tweti, who adopted ZaZu from a family that was giving him away.

Parrot owners who no longer can handle the energetic, vocal creatures typically ditch them, Tweti says, filling bird sanctuaries that have sprung up across the country. Or they "free" them, which explains, at least in Southern California, why it's possible to see flocks of wild parrots in various neighborhoods.

Tweti insists that parrots are the "fastest-growing unwanted pet," an assertion other bird welfare advocates can't prove but suspect is accurate.

Tweti, who has helped place 53 parrots in zoos and sanctuaries in the past three years, says that if people insist on having a parrot, they should adopt from a rescue group, shelter or other owner. Some pet parrots are bred under stressful conditions, such as dark, sterile cages with no toys or baths, animal advocates say.

It's not a stretch to say that Tweti's parrots have been her babies. She warms ZaZu's apple juice in the microwave and puts it out in one bowl. In another, she puts a powdery mixture containing nectar, vitamins, and pollen.

A third of her balcony has been netted into an outdoor aviary, full of amusements. When Tweti is home, ZaZu spends much of his time cruising around the apartment.

Beci Carr, former senior aviculturist at Aquarium of the Pacific, has high praise for Tweti's mission. "She is in the top 2 percent of bird owners - that she would do something that extravagant," she says. "She is doing the best she can to give that bird the best habitat she can."