Pickle the Parrot
A children’s book about a lonely parrot who dreams of flying with the wild Los Angeles parrots.
Edition of 27 • Watercolor • Pen and ink • Collage Digital offset • Italian book cloth • 9 x 9 inches • 2000
Pickle the Parrot – title page – pen and collage on paper
picklet the parrot – endpage
In the end he always flew off, wings drooping, to spend his days alone.
In fine weather he flew over the ocean and watched the waves slap at the sand. Pickle tried to ignore the seagulls who strutted together along the beach in their secret seagull rhythm.
On overcast days Pickle went to the Huntington Gardens just to smell his favorite flowers. He tried not to notice how the daisies grew like friends in nests and rings with a hundred other daisies.
Not even the fat gray pigeons would fly with Pickle. They were haughty and twittered, “Go find your own friends. Fo fly with those wild L.A. Parrots, if you can find them.” Then they ignored him while the coo coo cooed to each other
there lived all alone high up on a hill
Picklus, the parrot star
Pickle and Arthur talked long into the night. Arthur loved studying the stars. He told Pickle stores about the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, about Cassiopeia, the Milky Way and constellations named after animals and heroes.
lonely lonely lonely
That evening, as they settled in for the night on the roof of the Hollywood Bowl, a sliver of the moon shone and the stars were unusually bright.
He was the loneliest parrot in the world.