She calls for him constantly. (Or should that be caws?)

She lives on a houseboat on the Kanawha River. People hear her calling and wonder what's going on.

"Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!"

Who's Charlie? And who wants him so desperately?

"Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!"

That's Charlie Sattes. He's her guy. They've been together 15 years.

It was love at first sight.

He met her on a boozy vacation in Melbourne, Fla., in 1995.

"We went by a vet place that sells birds," he said. "We looked at some big ones. Then the guy says, 'You've got to look at these. They just hatched a week ago.'"

A tiny yellow-crested cockatoo caught his eye. And stole his heart.

"She hopped on my shoulder right off and started giving me little kisses on the ear."

Three thousand dollars later, he left the vet shop with a pet cockatoo and a giant unassembled cage.

"Alcohol does strange things," he said.

He named her Mongolet. "I was a barroom guy years ago," he said. "Everyone called me Mongo. I just feminized it."

First, he took Mongolet to his brother's house. "My brother said I needed to find another place to stay."

So he headed for Jacksonville. "She sat on my shoulder the whole time I was driving. I had my kids with me. She got car sick and threw up on us all the way to Daytona Beach."

Cockatoos crave attention. During an overnight respite on the beach, Mongolet got her fill. "We set up a tent on the beach and we had 50 people around us looking at this bird."

It was not a pleasant trip home. "On the way back to West Virginia, she threw up all over the car for 800 miles."

He bottle-fed her for eight weeks, literally shoving formula down her throat. "Most of it goes in, and most of it comes out -- all over you."

But he was smitten, especially when she started cawling his name.

"Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!"

Mongolet doesn't take to everybody like that. She doesn't like women. The list includes Sattes' daughter, Lesley, and his wife, Melissa. "She's jealous of women, especially blondes.

"I met Melissa in 2004, and she didn't realize the attraction between Mongolet and me. She put her finger in the cage and Mongolet bit her.

"If Melissa sits by me on the boat, she starts flipping out. She wants to be on my lap and 'that woman' is sitting there."

Family members don't share Charlie's affection for the bird. Her incessant squawking annoys them. In 2000, when Sattes moved to the houseboat, he left the bird in the house with his son. "Her screaming drove him crazy."

"Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!"

Then, the inevitable last straw. His son had a female visitor. "I heard a door slam. Then I saw her drive off in a huff. I said, 'What was her problem?' He said, 'Dad you have got to take this bird.'"

Mongolet must have felt a little smug when Charlie finally moved her into the houseboat. (Smart girls know how to get their way.)

She can be a little neurotic. "Melissa managed to get the bird into a portable cage then sat the cage on the edge of the dock. Suddenly, she heard Mongolet screaming: "Help me! Help me!"

Melissa ran out and saw a flock of geese making a beeline for the cage on the dock. "She's afraid of other birds," Sattes said.

She also has a problem with fowl language.

"She went through a period when she started calling everybody a son of a bitch," Sattes said. He eventually traced the verboten verbage to a boat neighbor who was tutoring her on the sly.

She loves a bath in the sink but hates a shower. On the boat one time, Sattes squirted her down with a hose. Mongolet was not pleased. After Sattes went back in the houseboat, she started screeching: "Charlie's an a--hole! Charlie's an a--hole!"

A mirror in her cage allows her to preen. She cocks her head, ruffles her feathers and flashes her bright yellow crest.

"Pretty bird! Pretty bird!"

"She's showing off," Sattes said.

When she's happy and excited, she bounces as if her legs had springs.

She loves to chew stuff. She chews cigarettes and cigars. "Her lungs are probably in the same shape as mine." She chews the bars off her cage. She has a steel perch because she chewed up the wood one. She chews pencils and beer cans. "Put a beer can in her cage, and the only thing left will be metal shavings."

He depends on the bird for his wakeup caw. "She wakes up at 6:30 every single morning and starts calling for me as loud as she can." Even on weekends, he added dourly.

Sattes doesn't worry about anyone trying to steal his precious Mongolet. Princess, his 100-pound Rottweiler, also lives on the boat.

Cockatoos live for 80 to 100 years, he said, but he doubts if Mongolet makes it that far. "When I die, that bird will be right behind me. Nobody wants her. Cockatoos grieve and die."

Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.