Bird Man laid to rest

• This man revived a dying lizard with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, always had a sick alligator in his tub. A brown recluse spider took him down.
• "The bite was the stressor," said son Andrew, one of three children Ralph fathered with beer heiress Beatrice Busch. "A heart attack took Poppy out."

He cried when his birds died. Area restaurants saved leftovers for his gopher tortoises. His life was an endless stream of stopping to save animals crossing the highway and injured birds stumbling in to see him.

• Staring where Ralph lay, his bushy eyebrows trimmed, longtime friend Bertie Higgins, proclaimed, "That’s not the Ralph I know."

He's right. Gone was the laughter and twinkle in his eyes, the guano on his shirt and the uncombed do. The preacher said it best, as Ralph's three grandchildren threw flowers atop his casket: "He lives on in all our memories."