Tricycle | Awake in the World

“THOUGH SHE BE LITTLE, yet she is fierce,” Shakespeare wrote of Hermia in Midsummer Night’s Dream. It would be an apt description of Mira Tweti, a 5-foot, 2 1/2-inch, 108-pound animal-welfare writer and Zen nun who’s probably the best friend any bird—captive or wild—could ever have. Tweti’s exposé of the parrot trade industry, Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species, published this fall, is rattling bird breeders across the country— maybe the world—and challenging parrot owners to reconsider the wisdom of keeping a caged companion.

“This book, I think, will drive bird breeders to violence,” Tweti says matter- of-factly. “I’ve had breeders tell me that it’s all lies—and that I hadn’t said all the good things they’ve done. Like what? That they’re keeping the ‘stud books’ on parrots? Stud books are for horse breeders. That has nothing to do with keeping parrot species alive.”