Igor’s nervous words reminded her of the famous case study of Alex, an African Grey parrot owned by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a professor of psychology at Brandeis University. Alex wielded a vocabulary of a hundred and fifty words and showed an amazing ability to solve problems. He could answer questions, count numbers, even understood the concept of zero. And more than that, the bird could also express his feelings quite plainly. When Alex had been left at a veterinary hospital for a surgical procedure, he had pleaded with his owner: Come here. I love you. I’m sorry. I want to go back. Igor’s words here in the isolation ward echoed eerily that same cognition and understanding.

Curious, she moved to place the jaguar cub back into its cage. The cub had finished the bottle and was already contently half asleep.

Igor continued to watch her, tracking her as she returned Bagheera to a woolen nest of blankets. Once she had the cub settled, she crossed back to the parrot and leaned closer.

She spoke softly. “Hello, Igor.”

“Hello,” he mimicked back and climbed up and down the bars, still clearly nervous with his new surroundings.

She struggled to think of a way to help calm him-then remembered her visit to the trawler’s hold and had a sudden inspiration. She slipped a PDA out of her pocket and keyed up the calculator. She pressed the icon for a familiar Greek letter.

Once ready, she asked, “Igor, what is pi?”

The parrot froze on the cage door, eyed her again, then hopped back to his wooden perch. He stared at her with one eye, then the other.

“C’mon, Igor. What is pi?”

He squawked again, his head jogged up and down a couple of times, then he began a familiar recitation. “Three one four one five nine two six five…”

His head continued to bob with each number, rhythmic and regular. She stared at her calculator’s display. It was the mathematical constant pi. The number sequence was correct. The parrot’s nervous shivering slowly settled as he continued, passing beyond the number of digits on her PDA’s display. He sank low to his perch and crouched over his claws, clearly finding some solace in the concentrated repetition, like someone knitting or an old man working a crossword puzzle.