This holiday season, we offer a look at life in Pinellas County through the lens of the traditional Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Today we begin with the first four verses. The series will continue Monday and conclude Tuesday.

[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Caroline Partridge of Largo has been collecting partridge and pear ornaments for about two years.

By Times staff
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 23, 2001

Partridge in a pear tree

LARGO -- About seven years ago, Caroline Partridge and her husband, Dale, moved here from Canada. The soulmates planned to buy a house on the beach and retire.

But in December 1998, Mr. Partridge was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an excessive thickening of the heart muscle. In May 1999, he died.

Through her mourning, Mrs. Partridge, a former school principal, remembered the prayer that once hung in her office: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

"I had helped so many kids cope with death or loss as a guidance counselor, I had some strategies to work with this," she said. "You make choices."

Mrs. Partridge chose to travel, take genealogy classes, stay active in her church, write in a journal.

Still, when Christmas came that year, she couldn't hear a carol without hurting. She needed a new Christmas tradition.

In early 2000, she and her daughter, Michele Patridge-Lane, who lives in Virginia, found the answer. They decided to collect partridge and pear ornaments.

It wasn't easy. Partridge decorations were few and far between. But after scouring Williamsburg, Va., they finally left a Waterford Crystal outlet shop with "Holiday Heirloom" partridge ornaments.

"It was the best partridge we could find, although I couldn't believe I paid $23 for that, and on sale!" Mrs. Partridge said the other day.

Today, the partridge in a pear tree is her Christmas theme, symbolizing a loving family that helped her find a new Christmas tradition. The glass bird and pears on her tree remind her of her four grown children and seven grandkids. An angel on top watches over them.

"When something like this happens, you can either go with it, or you can go over the deep end," she said. "I choose not to be miserable. You never know what God has in store for you."

-- CHRISTINA HEADRICK

Two turtle doves

They are a symbol of love, these delicate and silky doves.

It's not uncommon for a white dove to be released at an outdoor wedding ceremony. As the dove, which has been bought from a breeder, flutters away, the proud husband and wife ponder the bird as a powerful symbol of their undying love.

"Then they get eaten by a hawk," says Charlann "Charlie" Mason, referring to the doves, not the newlyweds. "Or they get disoriented and can't feed themselves. To me, that's a form of animal cruelty."

Mason knows. As a volunteer bird rescuer for the Suncoast Bird Sanctuary, she plucks injured birds from all across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. She and her husband, Dave, rescue more than 3,000 injured birds each year and deliver them to the sanctuary for treatment.

And a couple of times a year, the Masons will find a frightened white dove in someone's back yard under a laundry basket. Charlie Mason brings a few to her Seminole home and keeps them caged in her warm and cozy laundry room.

Then she finds them homes. Two snow-white doves, cooing like cradled toddlers, awaited adoption last week by a woman who works in a veterinary clinic.

These are not turtle doves, mind you. Those famous doves make their home in England, where they're having a rough go of it lately. The turtle dove population in England dropped 75 percent from 1976 to 1988.

Perhaps England could use volunteers like the Masons, who handle anywhere from 20 to 30 injured bird calls per day.

They have logged hundreds of thousands of miles in their trucks. They put so many miles on their last truck that it simply gave out.

One morning last week, Dave, 57, was off to Tampa to rescue a loon. Charlie, 59, fielded calls about a wounded gull on Clearwater Beach, an injured cormorant at Fort De Soto Park and a hurt tern on the north Skyway fishing pier.

"And this is a quiet morning," Charlie said.

-- CHRIS TISCH

Three French hens

If you have a problem with three hens with such manly names, take it up with their owners, Linda Bollea and her celebrity-wrestler husband, Terry, aka Hulk Hogan

"The children named them," Mrs. Bollea said of the chickens.

Rusty and Hershey truly are hens and lay eggs. But Lester is a guy in chick's clothing, a black rooster with a nickname reminiscent of the WWF: Lester the Molester.

These pampered poultry live with the Bolleas' six dogs, two cats, 11 other birds, six fish, five tortoises and two of each of the following: chinchillas, ferrets, iguanas, rabbits and toxic frogs. There is also a white rooster named Lilly who crows at 5 a.m. Mrs. Bollea owns another French Hen. It is the Belleair Bluffs restaurant and antique shop that her true love, the hard-bodied, but warm-hearted Hulk, gave her four years ago when she was looking for a way to create her own nest egg.

"Terry was very supportive and he's proud of me for doing this," she said.

Mrs. Bollea rented an old three-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house at 596 N Indian Rocks Road, at the entrance to Antique Alley. With about $75,000 worth of renovations, she created a medieval yellow stucco and timber French farmhouse.

The inside is pretty, feminine and stuffed with original oil paintings, collectible ceramics, needlepoint pillows, and hand-painted European antiques. The restaurant has its own bakery and carries its own line of French Hen wines. During the fall and summer, only breakfast and lunch are served.

In January, however, dinner will be served Thursdays through Saturdays. And the menu will feature a new item: three French hens pot pie.

-- TERRI D. REEVES

Four calling birds

These four calling birds have different talents, but the same message: If you're going to buy one of their feathered friends, make sure you know what you're getting into

Each bird came from a home with an owner unable or unwilling to take proper care of them.

Dori Hampl, owner of Just Winging It, a bird shop at 1003 Indiana Ave., says many buyers don't realize how much care exotic birds need and don't understand that some birds are not good in some settings, such as a small condo.

"They will see someone with a macaw on their shoulder at the beach and decide that looks really neat," she says. "They will buy one, bring it home, stick it in a cage and forget about it. Then (they) wonder why it develops some kind of health or behavioral problem."

Simon, an African grey parrot, came to Hampl from an owner who traveled too much to take care of him. He imitates ringing phones, the beep of the answering machine and his former owner's conversations. He can even belt Bridge Over the River Kwai.

Lynda Biedenmeister, an avian specialist, owns more than 30 birds, many rescued from consignment shops and neglectful owners.

Bubbles, her partly deaf Moluccan cockatoo, sings Barbara Ann like a tipsy old lady. Her previous owner had slugged her in the head.

When he's not whistling the theme from the Andy Griffith Show, her Congo African grey named Grayson asks other birds if they are happy and tells them to be quiet. He came from an overcrowded apartment with 20-some other birds.

Harley, a Molucaan cockatoo, is a product of divorce who likes to be held upside down and cuddled. When asked if he loves Mrs. Biedenmeister, he nods his head.

"I spend my time trying to correct problems caused by people who haven't done their homework before purchasing the bird," she said. "Not every bird fits in every household."

-- TERRI D. REEVES

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