A bird rescuer shares her chats

Every week, we talk with ChatGPT Pro subscribers to learn how they are using the product in their lives and work. Today, we want you to meet DeAnna “Dee” Hicks, RN, the co-founder and director of care at Marden’s Ark Avian Refuge in North Carolina. Dee uses ChatGPT to reduce the administrative load of running a nonprofit, turn ideas into operating plans, and make more room for the hands-on work only she can do. We hope her story sparks ideas for how AI might be useful in your own field.

While Dee was in nursing school, she and her husband adopted a Congo African grey parrot named Marden, and Dee came to think of him as her son. Marden died at just three years old, and Dee believes a food mix she had given him contributed to his death.

The loss changed the course of her life. In 2014, Dee founded Marden’s Ark in his memory and built a second career around rescuing companion parrots, improving their diets, and helping families care for them.

“I’m a person with a passion for caring for creatures that can’t fend for themselves in a world of human cruelty,” Dee says. “That’s my passion. That’s what we do. We rescue parrots.”

What began as a tribute became a demanding refuge that is often at capacity. Dee works around the clock to clean, prepare food, monitor birds, respond to families, and keep the property running. Finding reliable volunteers has been difficult, so the administrative and operational responsibilities fall largely on her shoulders.

“If you’d asked me two years ago, we were dying,” Dee says. “I was in the process of shutting down Marden’s Ark, just giving up and trying to rehome all the birds. And then I started using ChatGPT and life completely changed. All of a sudden I had the help I needed. I thought: I can do this. I can do this!”

Dee calls her ChatGPT assistant Lyra. Lyra has become something like a chief of staff for Marden’s Ark, turning Dee’s thoughts into grant applications, social media campaigns, and operating plans. Dee also uses voice to brainstorm while she works, switching to text when the parrots make the room too noisy.

“A lot of what I do is the absolutely 100% physical stuff that Lyra can’t do,” she says.

That extra time has become especially important as Marden’s Ark prepares for its largest project yet. A fire station is expected to open next door, bringing sirens, traffic, and nighttime noise that could distress the birds. Dee is looking for a new property with wooded acreage and is planning to build a food-production facility to sell the specialized blends she makes for her birds. The business would support better care while providing a sustainable source of revenue.

Dee says she is also able to make more time for her family. “I wouldn’t have been able to keep my grandson for a month and a half had it not been for Lyra doing the correspondence and the grant writing and the finishing paperwork,” she says. “I had free time with my grandson because of Lyra. And that meant a lot.”

Here are seven ways Dee uses ChatGPT to help her run Marden’s Ark:

I need help writing a business plan. It’s for a nonprofit that is trying to start a business to support its mission. The goal is two-fold: to encourage people to feed their birds healthier food, and to create a product that will generate revenue to fund a new building and hire help.

We’re a parrot rescue and sanctuary that will be making and selling high-quality, all-natural premium food for budgerigars aka “parakeets.” This food is unlike anything else on the market and is a blend of over thirty different ingredients, including seeds, nuts, herbs, and other botanicals.

Why was this chat valuable? “We started with a business plan (which was very well done), then went on to refine our mission statement and even rewrite our ‘About’ page for our website.”

I’m designing a food-production facility to prepare food for exotic parrots to human food-safety standards.

I need building plans for a small food manufacturing building. Dimensions cannot exceed 20 x 30 feet.

I also need to know about sanitation regulations for the building in Franklin County, with links directly to regulations, if possible.

Why was this chat valuable? “Lyra gathered an amazing amount of information, including links to relevant websites. It was very productive. It would have taken me weeks to read through all these sites and compile such concise information.”

Can I use an agent to oversee inventory management? Like keeping track of what’s ordered, what gets used, and reordering when supply is low?

I’d like to use voice to talk through what I’m doing as I make a batch of Big Bird food. Like “I am using three pounds of walnuts, two pounds of pecans, a bag of crushed blue tortilla chips” etc. As I am opening and mixing, I’d love for it to scan websites for the best prices and set up orders, or at least fill the cart and I could do the checkout later.

Why was this chat valuable? “This would replace a huge amount of work currently done manually and mentally by me alone. It would create a more accurate inventory, save us money on spoilage and expedited shipping, and give us an easy way to have an overview of what we have on hand.”

I need to build a bill of materials for the Large Bird Mix (for greys, Amazons, macaws, cockatoos) and the Small Bird Mix (conures, cockatiels, etc.). I only currently have a set-in-stone BoM for the Littles Grassland Blend (for budgerigars and cockatiels).

Here is what they’re made of, but sometimes the ingredients vary by season.

[Ingredients]

Why was this chat valuable? “Since our original intention was not to sell the larger blends, I just never developed a hard-and-fast formula, so here Lyra helps me with that.”

I want to create a script for a video I can upload to YouTube, FB, TikTok, etc.

• Target audience: people who have parrots or love parrots

• Tone/style: fundraiser

• Key points: Marden’s Ark Avian Refuge is a 501(c)(3) companion parrot rescue that has been saving birds and helping families who live with parrots since 2014. After over ten years, we have learned that a fire station is going to be built on the lot next to the facility. Now we must prepare to find a new place to go. We need to raise funds to purchase land and build or repurpose an existing building. The hope is to get wooded acreage where we can have a buffer both to prevent loud noises from disturbing the parrots and to prevent the parrots from disturbing neighbors.

Why was this chat valuable? “Lyra helped set up content for the video that was eventually produced and shared on social media. I am not good at doing ‘concept’ plans, but Lyra’s vision was amazing and the plan looked like it was done by an architect. It helped get views and promote our fundraising campaign on our social media.”

I’ve always wanted an app that could play species-specific bird sounds at a high volume for locating lost flyaway parrots.

Birds that have escaped often get disoriented and become afraid. Fear often provokes quietness to prevent attracting attention from predators.

I’d want the sounds organized by species, for example Nanday Conure, Yellow-naped Amazon, Citron cockatoo, Congo Grey, Timneh Grey, etc.

I don’t have a ‘dev.’ It’s just me, and I know diddly squat about apps. I just know this would be useful to bird owners whose birds have gotten outside.

Why was this chat valuable? “Lyra walked me through the install of Android Studio, creating an app within that program, and putting the sound files in the proper place. I used screenshots to confirm what I was doing at each step along the way, which was so valuable because it allowed Lyra to check things I was doing before I broke something. By the end of this chat, I had a very basic working app sideloaded on my phone for testing.”

@Outlook Email Triage my inbox, summarize threads, and draft replies.

Why was this chat valuable? “Had Lyra not flagged an urgent email about two parakeets in need of a safe rescue placement, I probably would never have found it buried among all the other emails that were sent to my spam folder. And it could have cost the birds their lives!”

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