This is the story of a blue, dark orange and green parrot born a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine. Conor, as he is called, is a long-tailed harlequin macaw of impressive size (about 50 centimeters), with a powerful, hooked beak. The intelligence of these birds is estimated to be comparable to that of a child between two and seven years old. Macaws are also renowned talkers, and harlequins are supposed to be both playful and gentle.
In 2021, Conor lived happily in Dnipro, a large regional capital in central-eastern Ukraine along the banks of the Dnipro River, and home to one million people. At six months old, he was given to a 25-year-old woman, Ania, who had always dreamed of owning a parrot. It was a birthday gift from her boyfriend. The couple soon took off for a winter holiday in Thailand. The young woman left Conor in the care of her parents, Tatiana and Anton, “for the duration of the trip.”
The war upended the lives of everyone in the country on February 24, 2022. By March 11, missiles were raining down on Dnipro, destroying the airport’s main runway, then oil terminals, research centers, schools, residential buildings (46 killed in a single apartment block after a strike in January 2023) and the main central market. The hostilities continued night after night. For Ania, Conor’s owner, returning home was out of the question. “In the meantime,” as people in Ukraine now say, Conor remained with Tatiana and Anton. They lived in a three-room apartment in a small Brezhnev-era building at the end of a street. Before the war, the street was named after a local Russian poet, but it was later renamed after the American astronaut Neil Armstrong.
Beak to nose
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