Let me tell you about one of my favorite urban legends.

It starts with a crate, a JFK airport in New York.

The crate had just come off an international flight when it dropped on the tarmac.

The crate hit the ground, split open, and out came parrots, loud, bright green parrots,

making their big break, trying to make it in New York.

Some say the great parade escape happened in the 60s, some say it was the 70s.

Some say it was hundreds of parrots, some say it was thousands, but whatever actually happened.

The parrots are most definitely still here, in Brooklyn, where I live, and they've taken

up residence at one of my favorite places, Greenwood Cemetery.

I'm Johanna Mayer, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places.

Today, we're going parrots watching, and we meet a veritable parrot expert who explains

how a cemetery became these birds unlikely home after this.

Steve Baldwin's interest in animals started early, when he was just a kid grown up in Manhattan.

My sister had a pair of fish.

We were living in Greenwich Village at the time, and on Bleaker Street there used to be this

place long gone, it was called exotic aquatics.

While his sister was getting food for her fish, Young Steve found himself drawn in by all

the other creatures on display.

They had kind of odd things like spiders and strange pets like that, and right over the

cash register, whenever we went in, there was a parrot in a cage.

I somehow fixated on this parrot, and I remember writing my parents a letter, setting forth

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