George Wojcicki, the Canary Man

George Wojcicki is a retired jeweler. He and his wife Helen have lived in the same Queens apartment building for the last 30 years. George has canaries in the basement. Lots of them.

This year he hatched 38 chicks from 26 pairs, and he says it was a disappointing season. Usually one expects six to eight chicks per pair. He shrugs: "Canaries are like people. Some couples work together and feed the babies together and you breed them good. Other couples, the female fights with the male and they don't feed the babies at all. They're not so good."

What does one do with so many canaries? Each year George sells some to pet stores, but the great thing is to go to shows. He recently stepped down as president of the Astoria Bird Club, but he still goes to four or five shows a year. Last year the big show was in Puerto Rico. It attracted breeders from all over the country and most of them were familiar faces. "Sometimes people try to quit and you don't see them for a while, but they always comes back. Once you're in canaries, you're stuck."

I asked George where he started breeding canaries and the surprising answer was Argentina. "My Spanish is better than my English or Polish. I had canaries in Argentina and I used to feed them on scraps, on anything. Not like here. Here I give them apples and oranges. I give them watercress. You know what is watercress? This is expensive shit!"

Born in eastern Poland in 1932, George led an early life that reads like the travels of Candide. When World War II broke out, the Russians invaded and George's father was forced into the army, while he and the rest of his family were sent to a prison camp in Siberia. The prisoners were released two years later but the war was still hot, and during six months in Uzbekistan most of them died of typhus or starvation. "There was no bread. People ate dogs and cats. They tried to eat grass."

George and his mother survived and ended up at a camp in Uganda, where he swam with the crocodiles in Lake Victoria. "I always loved animals. In Africa I had 40 rabbits and guinea pigs, too. We weren't allowed guinea pigs in the camp, so I built tunnels underground to hide them."

In 1948 everyone was rounded up again and sent to London. George's father was still alive and, incredibly, the family was reunited. "England's a small country." The British government offered them free passage to anywhere in the world except the United States. "Of course everyone wanted to go to the States, but we couldn't. So my father picked Argentina and we had to learn a whole new language. My father made boo-boo."

In Argentina George raised canaries and worked as a weaver, and 10 years later he'd saved enough money to buy his way to the States. On his first night in New York he was taken to the birthday party of a Polish girl who'd spent the war in France. George married the girl, they moved to Astoria and in 1961 he bought one male canary and put it next to the window in his sitting room. The rest he blames on his wife:

"The canary is singing and Helen says he's lonely. She tells me to buy him a female, but the stupid guy at the pet store sold me another male and they start fighting like hell. So I buy a female and now we have three birds. Helen says it's too much and sends us down to the basement. That's how I started breeding again."

There are two types of canary breeders, song breeders and color breeders. George is a color breeder because he no longer has the patience required for singers. "When you go to a song show you take four birds and put them in front of a judge. The canaries have 20 minutes to start singing and you just have to wait for them. Sometimes you sit 20 minutes and the birds don't make a sound. Enough!"

Besides, the color birds are prettier and more valuable. George says his prize canaries sell for as much as $150, and on the wall next to his bird room there is a large glass case overflowing with trophies. The trophies look like sports trophies only with a canary on top.

I asked George if he thinks he can communicate with his birds.

"People talk about singing like a canary. To sing like a canary is very difficult. Nobody can really do it."