Most people would not appreciate their home being characterized as “a zoo.” Not so Marty and Marcy Dunne.
Or at least, not so Marty.
Ever since he was a kid, Marty, 44, has dreamed of living in a “zoological environment,” as he puts it. Animals, birds and reptiles are just “his thing.”
Although he credits his parents for allowing him his boyhood hamsters, lizards and the occasional dog, he praises his wife of 18 years, Marcy (a woman of incredible humor), for allowing him his Dr. Doolittle-ness.
“True, I am a saint,” says Marcy, straight-faced, with evidence of her beatitudes now wafting up in chirps and peeps and caw-caws from the basement.
Marty keeps 50 birds down there. Big and small exotics primarily from Australia. Flying freely. And mating, we might add.
There’s also a 25-pound African Sulcata tortoise named Rochelle and a guinea pig named Maeve (another guinea pig named Lola and a rabbit named Gwen are the most recent additions). They are free to roam as well.
And finally, there are the swimmers — the giant catfish, crayfish and an impressive assortment of turtles (sliders, softshell and snapper) all congregating nicely inside a 120-gallon fish tank that’s inset into a wall and dramatically lit.
The Dunnes built themselves a genuine aviary (or bird room, which is the proper term among birders) in the bowels of their home. And save for the rising song, there is no evidence (no foul odors, no escaped birdseed, no drifting feathers) of such eccentricity lurking below — and of such grandeur.
Back to the nest
Theirs is a rambling, 100-year-old Prairie-influenced American Foursquare near downtown La Grange. It is Marty’s childhood home. He grew up here with his six siblings; Marcy was the girl next door/around the corner.
With three floors, two staircases and rooms for sitting that go unnamed, it is one of those big (guesstimate: 6,000 square feet), lovable, old homes.
But score one for feisty grande dames.
The house does a natty job of containing the Dunne family zoo, which besides the menagerie of pets includes four children (ages 14, 12, 9 and 7 ) and their army of friends.
After buying the house from Marty’s parents in the late 1990s, the Dunnes spent the next few years fixing this and that.
And then in 2007, they got serious about tickling the cobwebs out of the Foursquare. A yearlong, gutting/renovation began and it included: moving and remodeling the kitchen; adding a fourth bathroom and improving the other three; turning seven bedrooms into a more livable five; and tearing down the old garage and attaching a new one (with a mudroom) with a rec room over it.
Not to be forgotten, though, was the feather-and-fur factor. Marty’s critters factored into the reordered house as well.
“Marcy loves animals,” says Marty-sans-Marcy (she stepped out to take the kids to school), as if he’s telling secrets.
Four chipper miniature dachshunds now are dashing about the spotless, clutterless family room. (Marcy’s penchant for order is no secret.) Pet lizards Hector and Fluffy perch above the fray in their cage.
Marty (executive vice president of sales at InterCall, one of the largest providers of conferencing services in the world) goes on, not straight-faced: “But her whole deal is this. She said, ‘As long as it’s organized [in this house] and I don’t have to live in feces, then you can do this.'”
Do the bird thing. Do the lizard thing, the fish thing, the turtle thing, the dog thing.
(The potbellied pig thing, though, had to go. Marty’s beloved Lilo, which would lie on the couch with him at night, grew to be a bruiser-of-a-pig that “pooped all over like a meatloaf” [Marcy’s words]. To the petting zoo she went.)
Pre-renovation, Marty’s birds (two large cockatoos) lived upstairs in the main part of the house in a cage.
“The birds were awful with the kids. It was aw-ful,” says Marcy, now back from chauffeuring. She notes how loud those cockatoos were and their tendency to “flick stuff on the walls.”
And then four years ago, with the renovation still a twinkle in their eyes, the Dunnes got the idea of moving the birds downstairs in a giant cage and devoting a small portion of the basement to them. It was the start of a reordering plan for the house that would spill over into the renovation.
That was the turning point for her, for her acceptance of the bird thing, Marcy says. Out of sight, out of the main part of the house, “Everything was great,” Marcy says. “I could care [less] if there were 100 [birds] down there.”
And thus, turning point No. 2.
Fanciful takes flight
With Marcy’s blessing, Marty’s collection of birds grew. So did the amount of basement space devoted to it. So did the fancifulness of that space.
Marty, who frequents local bird swaps and is a torrid reader on the subject, designed the 600-or-so-square-foot bird room. (It was built by Brookfield-based contractor Andrzej “Andy” Dluski.)
Think: bird house at the zoo. And: life-size diorama.
Down the basement stairs and face-to-face with a glass-walled room, visitors can pull up a chair and be viewers. Or they can enter the diorama themselves (via a screen door) and become part of the action.
This is a free-flight bird room, occupying half the basement proper. Amid the faux plants and real bird houses (some embedded in the walls, all to encourage breeding) are 50 wildly colorful, exotic birds plus the guinea pigs and tortoise.
Among the winged-ones: princess parrots, rosella parrots, eclectus, owl finches, whydah finches, English budgies, cockatiel and canary. All are named — generally for people the Dunnes’ know.
And all appear to be quite comfy.
There is a woodsy floor down here — wood chips over the standard basement concrete floor.
There is San Diego weather (special lights on timers to mimic daylight, some with heating elements that bring the temperature to a perfect 75 to 80 degrees.)
There is a special air-filtration system and an acoustic-tile ceiling.
There is a pretty, short stone wall that wends its way through the bird room.
And there is smarts — Marty included a sink, wet/dry vac and, his best touch, mainly plastic plants (save for the real bamboo and real twigs/branches gathered from his backyard). He purchased the faux vegetation at Michaels craft stores.
Ease is the name of his game.
“I strategically put all the plastic plants underneath where they [the birds] will drop [poop],” Marty says. “And then I just clean the plastic plants.”
He pulls out the plants and hoses them down in the utility sink every three weeks or so. Daily, he runs the wet/dry vac.
“It’s very low maintenance,” says Marty, who connects with his feathered brethren, one foot into the bird room. Birds perch on his shoulder, nuzzle his neck, sing in his ear. They are drawn to him.
And he to them.
Marty is down in the bird room at 6:30 a.m. for feeding time. The smaller birds get a seed-vegetable-fruit medley. The big birds: a “stew” of beans, rice and fresh vegetables, which he cooks up every Sunday and freezes. The guinea pigs, tortoise and rabbit get mixed greens and pellet food.
“The sounds are fabulous. Listen right now. That’s one of my canaries,” says Marty, now upstairs. “It’s fun when you’re in here [the house] all alone and you can just listen to the birds go.”
(The Dunnes are known to share that pleasure as well, hosting field trips from the kids’ school. And for the record, the Dunne children are not nearly as into the birds as their dad.)
Marty goes on: “I like to go down here at night. I’ll grab a glass of wine and just sit down here” and think. “It’s my quiet time.”
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kklages@tribune.com
More online
See a video of a visit inside Marty Dunne’s bird room at chicagotribune.com/aviary.
