And Another One!

One Saturday in January 2002 we took our dogs to the Dog Wash for a bath. The owner of the place knew we had birds and asked me if we would be interested in adopting another one. My first response was no, but I had been reading about adopting older birds and quickly asked him what kind. He told me it was a Red Lored Amazon. I relented and said I might be interested. I gave him our phone number to pass on and we went home to talk it over.

We decided to go see what the story was. We were told that they were the second owners. The first owner had died so they didn’t know how old he was, but they had him for over 16 years. He was in a room all by himself. His owners were a lot like us – no kids, middle aged, both had jobs. They were interested in boating, motorcycle riding and other activities that kept them busy. That was the reason they wanted to find him a new home. They loved him and would miss him, but didn’t spend enough time with him and felt guilty about it.

Although the bird didn’t show any interest in me, he didn’t show any aggression either. I felt sorry for him. He seemed lonely. I said we would adopt him if they would allow us to take him to the vet first. They agreed. Our avian vet gave Classy a clean bill of health. She also took nail clipping for a DNA sex test. I thought it would be nice to know for sure if the bird was a male.

We took a look around our now crowded living room and could not imagine where we could possibly put another cage. By now we were down to 2 Lazy Boy chairs, an end table, a TV and a dining room table and chairs. We had already decided to add on to the house instead of moving, so we disassembled the dining room table and stored it downstairs. We replaced it with a tiny old table – just big enough for 2 people – and a new cage was put in the dining room.

As we were bringing Classy home I wondered how he would fit in. He had been by himself for so long! When we walked in the door our other birds started whistling and calling out. As soon as he heard them Classy got really excited and began to return the calls. I knew we had done the right thing.