NORTHAMPTON — Sonia Wilk was devastated when her beloved green macaw, Munah, flew away in June. She canvassed the Pioneer Valley, posting fliers, filing a police report and even getting her neighbor to lift her 60 feet in the air on his cherry picker so she could call out for her companion.
But the weeks dragged on, and Wilk began to get fewer phone calls with possible leads before they eventually stopped altogether. June turned to July, and July to August, when Wilk left on a three-week trip to southeast Asia.
It was on the first day of her trip, however, when she received an email with a subject line she couldn’t miss: Munah.
What followed was a stressful three weeks of vacation, then a whirlwind trip to Seymour’s Bird Refuge in Maine, where Andrea Tims, who runs the center, had a green macaw she believed might be Wilk’s shoulder-perching friend.
Wilk thought she recognized the deep, gravely voice of Munah when Tims set up a video chat between the bird and Wilk from southeast Asia. But Wilk couldn’t be sure, so when she showed up in Maine she was jet-lagged, nervous and excited all at once.
At first, the bird wouldn’t get on Wilk’s arm, and the macaw’s breast looked bigger than Wilk remembered. Eventually, however, the bird shot up to Wilk’s shoulder and refused to leave. After about an hour, she began making familiar vocalizations, and started scratching at Wilk’s freckles like she always had before.
“It became clear she was Munah, but just different,” Wilk said on Friday afternoon at her home, Munah perched safely on her shoulder. Wilk’s eyes welled with tears as she recalled how the bird began her familiar antics in the car ride home.
“In a way that she was my girl, she was the bird I know,” Wilk said. Just like the first time she had brought her home around four years ago.
But not everything is the same since Munah returned earlier this month.
It turns out that Munah was found at a horse farm in Litchfield, Maine, where she reportedly was discovered squawking at the disturbed horses. During her 180-mile journey as the macaw flies, she has encountered and begun imitating all kinds of different sounds she didn’t know before.
“It’s all new voices, it’s all new things she’s picked up,” Wilk said. Munah now meows like a cat, which Wilk finds annoying. More endearing is when she says “come on” and “good bird” — previously unknown phrases. “She’s much more vocal than before she got out.”
Munah also makes different sounds that Wilk and others suspect may be imitations of blue jay and crow calls, her voice now infused with the avian dialects of her travels. As Wilk explained those noises, Munah bobbed her head from side to side in a dance Wilk expects the macaw learned from another bird at the refuge.
Despite her new voice, however, she’s the same old Munah, nuzzling into Wilk’s neck and laughing along with her. Although, there is one other new thing about her.
In Hebrew, the word “chai” means alive, and because Hebrew letters also double as numerals, the letters that spell “chai” also signify the lucky number 18. Wilk explained that the friend who traveled with her to Maine told Wilk that in older times, if someone survived a threat, they sometimes would add the name “Chayyim” — or the feminine form “Chaya” — to their name.
For Wilk, there’s nothing better than getting to once again, after around three months apart, spend time with her familiar but now well-traveled Munah Chaya.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.