Accidents Part 2

t
We took our injured baby cockatoo home from the vet and poured attention on her. We took turns holding her and hand feeding her corn and other veggies. She had been showing a preference for Mark lately, but now she definitely wanted her mom, so I spent a lot of time with her. I felt so bad – if only I hadn’t gone to the store that day! But that really wouldn’t have helped. As I cleaned the blood off her cage I realized that it must have happened early in the day. None of her food was touched and there was no poop on her papers other than a little under where she had been sitting when I got home. Thank God there was a perch within reach of the toy. If she had been hanging upside down all day I don’t know if she would have survived.
t
t
Thank God also that I don’t fall apart at the sight of blood; I know a lot of people that do. For some reason I am able to keep a clear head and do the right thing during an emergency situation. It’s after I’ve done all I can do and everything is taken care of that I lose it!
t
The doctor couldn’t have been more wrong about Spike using that foot. After it healed you would never know that there was even an injury unless you noticed the missing toes. She uses it just as she would if it was whole. Spike isn’t the only bird we have that had foot injuries. Emelio is missing the tips of a couple toes – inexperienced bird parents will sometimes bite off the toes or wings of the babies (how awful!) Classy’s right foot looks like it was broken and never healed properly – he walks on the outside of it. They actually adapt to these handicaps very well.
t

Peeper had an accident too, but this one involved her beak. To this day I can’t figure out what happened, she must have caught it on something, but darned if I know what. I was holding her one day and noticed that her beak didn’t look right. She was chewing on my finger and her beak was moving oddly. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was ripped from the lower left corner to almost the middle along the edge where it meets the face. I had seen pictures of birds with beak injuries in the magazine; usually inflicted by another bird – they’re awful!

t

We rushed Peep to the vet, but there was nothing she could do. She said that it wouldn’t heal and we would just have to wait for it to grow out! I was really worried about it, but the vet assured me it would be ok. She was wrong – not about it being ok, but about it healing. I kept a good eye on it for about a month and the bird seemed to be doing fine, so I relaxed my vigilance. About a month later I noticed that the tear was completely healed! Not enough time had passed for the beak to grow out, so that was the only explanation that made sense. Mark thinks it was the whole cranberries we feed the birds in winter. He read somewhere that they promote oral health and decided that a beak was kinda like a tooth, so maybe that was it! I don’t care what it was, I’m just thankful she didn’t have any complications from the accident.

t

Cathy

t

The top picture is Mark hand feeding Spike after the accident - notice the blood on her feathers! The next one is Spikey right back at the upside down swinging not long after the accident. Notice how she improvised; she couldn't have the toy anymore, so she found a substitute.