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alex had been
popular we had done lots of television things
every time he did something exciting like the none
you know we actually
did that scientifically we did a whole paper on it showing it was repeatable it wasn't just
this anecdotal thing
the newspapers got onto it there were interviews all over 0:00:18.330,0:00:23.079 but you know would last a day or two and then it would fall apart
and still after he died
I was in complete shock %uh we found out about it on a Friday morning
it does
it was a nightmare
over the weekend friends came from
Washington they drove up to be with me to help me
%uh local friends were making sure people were bringing food to make sure I would eat
they you know my friends would trundle me off to bed not that I could sleep they
would
make sure
over the weekend
I was totally
comatose not functioning but Monday morning I call up the folks at at brandeis
who had been working with me on PR for years you know alex died in and we have
an obituary
and they say well you know
this is a bird in it's not going to have a lot of traction and said just release it
and whatever
I'm we're getting phone calls rumors are coming through
and we need to make an official statement
this is nine AM and it takes forty minutes to drive from my house
to brandeis 0:01:27.970,0:01:31.180 and by that time they get to the lab my phone
my cell phones ringing off the hook the lab phone is ringing off the hook
My lab managers cell phone is ringing off the hook
people are calling from all over the world
for interviews about this
hold the phone up
you can close your eyes focused on the question answered as best you can
I'm used to doing that so I could snap into this interview mode
it was something I could hold onto
but I didn't think about the ramifications I just coped
and
the e mails were pouring in three thousand to my private account boxes and boxes of mail 0:02:06.600,0:02:08.749 coming people telling me
alex is impact on their lives
there were three articles in the new York times the new York times his obituary was
in the economist
that back page is reserved for world leaders maybe Pavarotti folks like
that
a parrot
manchester guardian all these
it was just overwhelming and
the letters from people
we're completely overwhelming
people telling me and there is one woman
she'd been contributing ten dollars a month
for quite a while and I
note thank you so much for assisting
and I do that when people contribute
I have to say maybe once in a while it falls through the cracks but I really try
religiously whether it
ten dollars or ten thousand mean for the person giving me ten dollars
could be more percentage of their income
back story
and now she sends me a letter about her back story
a number of years ago she been diagnosed with one of these really nasty diseases that don't
take you out but
make your life really miserable
and she was suicidal she just didn't want to cope with this and
she's sitting there thinking about how she's going to end it all
the television on and it turns out a little story about alex and she looks at this little
bird
doing all this interesting
stuff and and somehow that gave her
a new lease on life and she actually
started thinking about this got a bird and and connected to this
%um
amazing that
thank you think that alex somehow helped
somebody from
pretty remarkable isn't it
we get letters from
from a grade school
the week before the teacher had done
a project on animal intelligence
she brought her gray
into
the classroom
and talked about intelligence conservation and stuff when the children heard that Alex had died
they all wrote me notes sympathy notes
so this is grade school children drawing little pictures of Alex
and opening it up and writing these lovely little notes
it was overwhelming
and so that's why I ended up writing the book because I realize that people didn't know
my back story they're all sharing there is
when I was giving talks it was always science
even in birds clubs
I mean I just gave the science and then at the end I would say we need some funds to
keep this going then we'd mean literally pass the hat
I never shared with people the struggles that we had gone through
and I realized
they were sharing their struggles
I needed to share mine