Parrot

Going to the Jan Steen exhibit at the National Gallery is a bit surreal, but in a totally rewarding way. It's like party time, Sunday school and a museum visit all at once.Add in that these paintings, created hundreds of years ago, are as up to the minute as yesterday's warning from the surgeon general, and it's not surprising if the mind reels. But what a stimulating reel it is.Steen, one of the foremost of the 17th-century Dutch genre painters, is here given his due with the first major exhibit of his work in the United States -- 48 paintings covering his entire career.

Hollis Paschen is grieving for her missing pet parrot, and all her neighbors know it."LOCKSLEY! GOOD MORNING SWEETHEART! WANT SOME COFFEE?" Ms. Paschen screamed from the deck of her Columbia home yesterday at dawn, as she has done most daybreaks for better than a week. "HERE YOU GO. COME ON, HONEY."Locksley -- a 1-foot-tall, green and yellow Amazon parrot -- is loose in a forested valley behind Ms. Paschen's home in Oakland Mills village, just north of Talbott Springs Elementary School. Ms. Paschen fears the bird isn't eating, is growing weaker and will eventually fall prey to a lethal crow attack.

From The Sun May 14-20, 1845* May 15: The new watch house for the Southern District is now in progress of erection, at the intersection of Sharp, Montgomery and Little Hughes streets.* May 19: Breaking the Sabbath -- A youth was yesterday arrested for fishing from one of the city wharves. He was fined one dollar and costs.From The Sun May 14-20, 1895* May 14: The funeral of Mrs. Frank Brown, wife of the Governor of Maryland, took place yesterday from the Christ Protestant Episcopal Church, St. Paul and Chase streets.

Jimmy Buffett's success does not compute.He does not have a hit CD. He's not on the radio much (unless you count the occasional spin on stations specializing in soft rock from the '70s). He's not hip, he's not weird, he's not making a comeback, he's not changing his sound, and he's not emerging from a much-publicized stint in rehab. He supports the same environmental causes (conservation and saving the wonderfully cuddly and sweet manatee) that he did years ago.Yet in a summer when attendance was down for even the most successful shed-rockers (Lollapalooza, Bonnie Raitt, Yes and Steve Miller)

Jack Cover said he took some good-natured ribbing when he went hunting for a tree this summer in a tropical rain forest.There are, after all, plenty of trees in the forest. The mission was a success, but it was not just any tree he found.Mr. Cover and his National Aquarium crew found just the right tree for a new exhibit -- a member of the legume family known scientifically as Pentaclethra macroloba that grows along stream banks in Costa Rica's lowlands.His tree met a critical test. Its dimensions fit an exhibit space in the Baltimore aquarium's rain forest, where Mr. Cover is the curator.

HERE'S the New York Times' take on the marriage of Lisa-Marie Presley to Michael Jackson, in an editorial entitled "Love Story," published Aug. 3:"Somewhere above reality -- somewhere, let us say, between the earth and the ether -- there lies a land whose only manifestation is in those fabulous tabloids that greet supermarket shoppers just before they reach the cash register. The checkout line becomes a reading room."In this land, 99-year-old women give birth to babies almost every day. Some of these women have 15-year-old boyfriends.

DALLAS -- Austin, Texas, police weren't sure what they had stumbled upon when they stopped a Chevrolet Suburban in February 1992 and spotted boxes crammed with 70 baby Amazon parrots.Federal agents and wildlife experts said that the pre-dawn traffic stop and seizure of the smuggled birds with a U.S. retail value of $70,000 led last month to a 20-count federal indictment in what they describe as one of the nation's largest parrot-smuggling operations.Investigators and bird experts said the case is a microcosm of a major smuggling operation on the Texas-Mexico border, responsible for the illegal importation of more than 25,000 birds a year.

AS RECENTLY as two years ago, it was possible for an America-firster or true-blue trade unionist to get outfitted head to toe by clothes made in the U.S.A.No longer, as evidenced by a tour of the "outlet" mall in Queenstown where Routes 50 and 301 converge. A shopper can still find an occasional item made in the United States, but the majority of clothing bearing U.S. brand names is "made" or "assembled" elsewhere. In some stores that clearly don't manufacture their own apparel, not a single American label can be found.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. -- A defense lawyer in a Northern California murder case says he believes Max the parrot may be more than just an ordinary bird -- that Max may, indeed, hold the answer to who smothered Jane Gill to death in her bedroom two years ago.Max, the lawyer says, may be a witness. But the jurors in the trial will not hear from Max. An attempt to get the African gray parrot's testimony -- rather, testimony about the bird's testimony -- into evidence last week was blocked by the judge.

They can be playful and affectionate one day, sullen and withdrawn the next. They fling their food when they eat and scatter toys thoughtlessly. Car keys and other bright objects attract their attention, and they've been known to pull glasses and dangling earrings off guests.And that's not all. They can throw spectacular tantrums, and once they start screaming, it's almost impossible to get them to stop. If you live with them, invest in a hand-held vacuum and keep paper towels handy.Did you guess toddlers?