DELAND — There is a palace in this city, but the plumed residents aren’t royalty.
Rather, their backgrounds include homelessness, abuse, and neglect.
And they’re birds.
Some like Peggy, an Amazon parrot, has a missing foot to prove it, or Zeus, a red macaw whose featherless, naked body tells the rough life he’s had in his 22 years.
But these birds have left those uncertain times behind and have found safety and happiness at this DeLand bird rescue named Patty’s Parrot Palace — all 123 of them.
Craigslist ad for cage leads DeLand woman to neglected parrots
Trish Koile is the founder of Patty’s Parrot Palace.
She was a property manager who managed apartments for a private company. She did not initially have pet birds in mind. But on visiting her friend one day, she saw her friend’s conure, a small to medium size parrot native to Central and South America and said she enjoyed listening to the bird’s constant chirping.
“I kept listening to the conure and I said ‘I need a bird.’ I didn’t know anything about them,” Koile recalled recently during a News-Journal tour of her bird sanctuary. “So, I went and got a conure, then got another conure, and then I went looking for a cage for her (second conure).”
Koile said she could not have imagined then in 2010 that answering an ad for a cage would change her life.
DeLand bird rescuer said ‘birds were shadows in cages’
“I answered an ad on Craigslist (for a cage) and that’s when I ran into a hoarding situation,” Koile said. “And there were 14 birds (in a small shed), no windows, no lights, they were all shoved in there.”
Koile said she arrived at the Winter Park home, and she was taken to a shed to look at the cages for sale. While looking at the cages she was thinking of buying, Koile said she happened to glance at other cages in the back and saw movement.
“Then, I could see a shadow in one of the cages, and I asked the lady ‘are there birds in these cages?'” and she said ‘yes, they are for sale, too,'” Koile recounted.
There were 14 birds — Amazon, Eclectus, and Quaker parrots, and conures.
Koile recalled how the cages “were filled with spider webs (and) you couldn’t see the birds inside of them.”
“They were just shadows,” Koile said.
Koile said she knew then and there that she couldn’t just buy the cage and turn her back on the birds.
She told the seller that she would buy the cage, but then talked the woman into surrendering the birds, which she did “with a little coaxing.”
“I told her I’d make sure these birds would find a good home,” Koile recalled.
DeLand woman could not find shelter for rescued birds, so she housed them on her back porch
After convincing the woman to give up the birds, Koile said she called her husband and a couple of men she worked with and asked them to get a truck.
“She called and she was actually crying, she said ‘we got to get these birds out of here,'” her husband Tony Koile recalled.
And the reasons for rescuing the birds were made pretty clear.
“Before we could even get the birds packed up and off the property, we lost one to a rat, (who) was chewing through the cage to get to their food, and it was fighting with the bird,” Koile said.
But finding shelter for the birds would become problematic. Bird rescues Koile called in Volusia County did not have room, she said.
“Every single one of them was full,” Koile recalled. “Nobody had space for these birds.”
So Koile and her husband took the birds to their home and placed them on their back porch.
“We gave them new cages, whatever we had to do. We put them in out 800-square-foot sunroom at our house,” Koile said. “I started rehabilitating them, I got their nails done, gave them baths, put them on a good diet, started handling them, and we started an adoption program.”
Patty’s Parrot Palace became home to circle of unwanted birds
Koile started finding homes for the rescued parrots, doing all that the animals needed to be ready to be adopted.
“And I said if I am going to do that, I might as well start an organization,” Koile recounted. “So, we came up with Patty’s Parrot Palace.”
Koile’s name is Patricia, but everyone knows her as Trish. After discussing it with her husband, they determined that Trish did not give the flow to the bird rescue’s name like Patty, a name her teacher called her in elementary school.
Patty’s Parrot Palace was born.
Koile found home for six of the 13 rescued birds, and her home became an advertisement for a safe haven for birds, she said.
“And then it started happening. I started getting all the calls, ‘Hey, I heard you are getting into rescue, and we got this bird,'” Koile recounted. “And before we knew it, the calls were just coming in.”
The need to find homes for the birds was compounded when those who had adopted the parrots started returning the birds because they could no longer care for them, Koile said.
“The people were saying my life has changed, I now have a grandchild, and the grandchild is trying to mess with the bird, or I’ve moved my father in with me, and he has dementia and he’s chasing the bird around the house,” Koile said. “So, we saw this circle — we want a bird, we adopt or buy a bird, we get entertained by the bird or we love the bird, but our lives changed.”
5-acre DeLand bird sanctuary became a necessity, founder says
The birds being returned to Koile raised another concern. Her back porch was no longer big enough, and living in a subdivision, they could not have them at home.
She tried to push more adoptions but some of the birds had been so neglected or abused that they did not want to be handled by people.
“Some of these birds are not manageable, they don’t want to be handled or they never have been. And so that’s when we started looking for somewhere to move to,” Koile said.
They needed space and they needed a place where the birds could be safe, she said.
In 2017, Koile and her husband found a 5-acre plot of land on South Beresford Road surrounded by a horse farm, a bee farm, and an orchard. There was only a 125-year-old barn on the property, she said.
The bigger space, however, meant that Koile could implement her idea of a bird sanctuary.
“Birds are meant to forage, flock and fly. Which means they need a group of their own friends, they need to be able to search for food and they need to be able to fly,” Koile said. “So, instead of just putting them in a building in their own cages, we said we are going to put them in their flock and allow them to go back to being birds in in-flight cages.”
Since 2017 Patty’s Parrot Palace has seen birds arrive, some without a foot, some survivors of cancer, and others naked because they have pulled their feathers out from stress brought on by neglect.
But at this palace, they have found freedom, safety and most of all, love, Koile said.
Patty’s Parrot Palace ‘heaven-sent’
Pam Stone, of Oviedo, who has volunteered at Patty’s Parrot Palace for 12 years, agreed Koile was “heaven-sent” for the abused and neglected parrots.
Stone, 76, and her husband, Bart, 83, travel from Oviedo to help Koile care for the birds.
“She has just created a wonderful, wonderful, haven for these little guys,” Stone said.
So, who gives up these neglected parrots?
“A lot of the birds come from, there are really three areas,” Koile said. “One is people get too old to care for their birds, the second is life-changes . . . and the third is just (people) didn’t know what they were getting into, education-wise.”
Parrot Palace allows birds to fly in large shelters, DeLand man says of bird rescue
Tony Koile said he and his wife Trish had planned to travel once they were retired and their dogs were gone, but his wife’s “new passion” has made both of their lives interesting, he said.
“She is always taking care of animals, and when she found these birds, she has done so much for them,” Tony Koile said.
Tony Koile said he has also realized that there are not many bird rescues in Volusia, especially ones that care for parrots.
“We were hoping that we were going to rehabilitate them and adopt them out, but it didn’t work out that way, and we still have some of those original birds,” Tony Koile said.
Their efforts to help the parrots started small — 13 rescued birds and two pet conures — but as soon as word spread that the Koiles were rescuing birds, people just started bringing animals, he said.
“What she’s done is amazing. Nobody else could do what she does,” Tony Koile said.
Stone said Trish Koile has the characteristics to be a bird rescuer. Birds are very social creatures, and they need people and love, and Trish Koile has all of that for them, she said.
“I call her the bird whisperer,” Stone said. “She is so fabulous with them.”
Tony Koile recently retired from his job as a property maintenance supervisor, and since he joined his wife Trish at the parrot sanctuary, he has not had a boring day, he said.
“The best part is just seeing all the animals happy. Watching a bird fly that was brought up in a cage, it’s pretty neat,” Koile said.
And all the birds are happy, there is no doubt about that, said Robin McIntosh, who has a 21-year-old Umbrella Cockatoo housed at Patty’ Parrot Palace.
McIntosh said her cockatoo named Lily Grace, became restless after another pet bird died, and she could not keep the bird home because it was too loud for the neighborhood. So, for four years she traveled around to Naples, Melbourne and other places trying to find a home for her cockatoo, who she said is like a child to her. But she had no luck finding a suitable home.
Then she heard of Patty’s Parrot Palace and met Trish Koile.
“Trish has a zest for life and she transfers that to the birds,” McIntosh said. “She is compassionate in her drive to give these birds a better life.”
McIintosh said she especially liked the idea of in-flight cages where the birds were free to fly instead of being stuck in a small cage. She now lives in Nashville but visits twice a year to see Lily Grace and spends time with her.
“I donate to keep Lily Grace there,” McIntosh said.
Lily Grace the umbrella cockatoo has been at Patty’s Parrot Palace since May 22, 2011 and she could not be happier, McIntosh said.
“Oh my God, there is no better place that could be better for Lily Grace and the birds,” McIntosh said getting emotional. “The birds are so happy in their in-flight cages and they flourish.”
―Reporter Patricio G. Balona writes crime and public safety stories covering Volusia County and on occasions, Flagler County. His coverage areas include Daytona Beach, DeLand, Ormond Beach, and beyond.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: How an ad for a birdcage sparked a massive parrot rescue in DeLand
Reporting by Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
