Jonathan’s Feather Delivery Service
Now 56 and a professional anthropologist, curator, and former professor, he has yet to see the pyramids or the temple of Ramses II. Reyman pursued his passion all the way through grad school at Southern Illinois University. But in 1967, just as he was poised to start his dissertation on Eastern-Mediterranean trade routes, the Six-Day War broke out. “No one was going to put research money in the Middle East,” he explains.
The day got better and better; he’d heard that the Pueblos were difficult to work with, but since his professor knew the people, the two anthropologists were welcomed. “From the moment I was there, I felt at home. The food, the people, the scene, were just wonderful.” After all, he says, “I liked deserts.”
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The project is not part of his job as a research associate of the Illinois State Museum Society, but his boss, Michael Wiant, a former student of Reyman’s, invited him to use the museum facilities after he was hired in 1993. “It’s just good, a good thing to do,” says Wiant. The project also builds goodwill between the Pueblos and the museum, he says.
At the front of the room, Chip is rather quiet on his perch; Reyman says that’s because he’s nervous. But when he drops a Brazil nut he says, “Uh oh,” and when Reyman says, “Gimme four,” he holds out a claw. He can tell knock-knock jokes, his owner says, and once spoke to an unwitting telemarketer when the phone was held to his beak.
Because Chip is not a pure breed but a cross between a blue-and-gold and a scarlet macaw, his feathers cannot be used. Neither can those of his companion, a Senegal parrot named Hercule Parrot; Senegal feathers were not traditionally used by the Pueblos. The two birds spend their days caged in the Reyman kitchen, listening to National Public Radio.
