Brookfield Zoo mourns loss of 83-year-old Cookie the cockatoo

He was crusty, a curmudgeon, as only the elderly can be. Sometimes he would shriek. While he did tolerate certain people, others he just wanted to bite.

"If he didn't like you, he let you know it," said Tim Snyder, a business associate. "He was like a cranky old geezer."

But Cookie the cockatoo, 83, who died Saturday, was seldom alone. He was the coddled patriarch of the Brookfield Zoo.

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