This will come as a surprise to many people who didn't
know he was ill, but Ken Globus passed away on September 10th. Ken, who
hadn't been a smoker for about 25 years, was diagnosed with lung cancer that had
spread to his esophagus. What's truly shocking is that, between his
original diagnosis and his death, only 10 weeks had elapsed.
Most
of you are receiving this email because you're on his mailing list. So
most of you know him as The Bird Whisperer.
Here are some things
you may not know about how Ken got started working with aggressive and phobic
birds. Our parents used to own a tropical fish store in Inglewood,
California. One day, our mother cleared out some space in the store and
asked Ken what he thought would be a good idea to put there. Ken thought
about it, then suggested that they might start carrying a few birds. Since
our parents knew nothing about birds, they put Ken in charge, and he got to work
reading books and researching bird behavior before he bought his first bird for
the store. Keep in mind that, in those days, almost all birds sold in
stores were wild caught, not bred in captivity - so they were usually pretty
terrified and unruly. What Ken discovered - to his great surprise - was
that very little of the advice in the bird books was appropriate for dealing
with aggressive birds. So, through trial and error, he learned how to work
with them.
One of the many qualities that made Ken so successful with
birds was his patience - he could simply persist until a bird decided that being
aggressive wasn't working to drive Ken away. Another quality that served
him so well was his flexibility - if one thing didn't work to calm a bird, he'd
try something else until he made progress. (Parenthetically, it's a
quality that also made him a great father.)
When my parents reached
an age when they were no longer able to run a demanding business, Ken went out
on his own, doing private training sessions for bird owners. It was at one
of those sessions where an immensely grateful client said, "Ken, you really are
a bird whisperer."
Ken called me and mentioned the incident, and I
suggested he use the name The Bird Whisperer because I thought it would quickly
convey what he was capable of doing. But he was reluctant to use the name
because he thought some people might think it was a bit pretentious. As a
marketer, I reasoned that, at the very least, it was very easy for people to
remember, where Ken Globus was not. He finally agreed.
Over
the years, a lot has been written and said about Ken's techniques. You are
certainly free to dismiss what I'm about to say as the biased rantings of a
grieving brother, but I was simply blown away by what Ken was able to do with
birds. I traveled with him both to private sessions and public workshops,
and I watched him calm birds that couldn't even be touched by their
owners. I saw people sobbing at the the sight of Ken stroking a bird's
neck, a bird who wouldn't allow even its owner to come near it for over a
decade. And I saw this happen many times.
His bird-training sessions really picked up when he set up
his web site. For the first time, people outside of the Los Angeles area
where he lived could get a sense of what his techniques were all about. He
began to be interviewed by news organizations, magazines and newspapers, all of
them interested in how he was able to tame birds so quickly. He was hired
by zoos, bird stores, and rescue organizations to deal with birds they'd given
up on. And somewhere along the line, Ken got a phone call from a woman who
identified herself as Kate Capshaw. Thinking it was a joke perpetrated by
one of his friends, Ken hung up on her. She called back and informed him
that she and her husband,
Steven
Spielberg, would like Ken to come to their house for a private
session. He gulped, and agreed. And as Ken showed Kate how to handle
the bird, Steven walked all around him with a video camera, recording the entire
hour-long session. Talk about pressure!
Through his many
interviews and public appearances, Ken got to be pretty adept at dealing with
one kind of pressure or another. The type that gave him the biggest
problem came from his detractors who often wrote vicious and totally untrue
things about him, and he would sometimes forward to me the more outrageous
items. Usually we would giggle like schoolgirls, but I found some of these
things to be appallingly mean-spirited, and I would want him to post an angry
rebuttal. But, for the most part, he wouldn't. He simply felt that
these people were uninformed. I always thought that was a most charitable
way of looking at it, especially considering that many of the most shamelessly
idiotic things were perpetrated by some of the more authoritative people in the
bird world, people who felt more comfortable sniping at him from a distance
rather than bothering to actually attend one of his events. But I
digress.
What Ken was able to do with birds wasn't magic. Ken
was just an incredibly sensitive and intuitive person who, in a very short span
of time, could figure out the best way to get a bird over its fears. At
this I'm fairly certain there were few like him.
I can also tell
you that as a brother, there were none like him. He was kind, funny,
incredibly bright, supportive, generous, and courageous - qualities he displayed
up to his dying breath.
Last week there was an occasion I'll never
forget. It was only a few days after his passing, and my wife wanted to
put together a "remembrance", where a few friends could gather to talk about
what Ken meant to them. Even though this was thrown together at the last
minute, over 60 of his friends showed up, and I'm certain that, given enough
time, a few hundred might have been there. Ken was loved and appreciated
by so many people. There were folks there from various stages of his life,
all relating stories about Ken that helped to paint a complete picture of
him. And what a picture it was!
He was a great guy. A
talented man who could do so many things well. And he was my best friend
for 57 years.
- Dennis Globus
