This is obviously a problem that has taken some time . . . more]]>

I received an email over night from a desperate parrot owner asking me for help. Her neighbor is taking her to mediation court in less than a week because her macaws are screaming too much in the outside aviary.

This is obviously a problem that has taken some time to escalate to this point:

1. The macaws had to develop the habit of screaming non-stop. You might say they were inadvertently trained by the owner to do so. How? Her attempts to get the birds to be quiet obviously were reinforcing the behavior instead.
2. The deterioration of her relationship with her neighbour probably also did not happen overnight. Plus there is the time lag of many weeks, if not months between the neighbor's first complaint and going to court.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. But I don't have one of those. Of course I can help her with anti-scream training, but with only a week before the court appointment and a very irate neighbour I just don't think there is enough time to ward off disaster.
It is very likely that the court will rule for her to have to keep the macaws indoors at all times or even get rid of them. What a nightmare! I really do not understand why she waited this long to ask me for help.

How to Solve Screaming Problems ...

You can find detailed information on anti-screaming training in my book:
Screaming & Screeching: How to Solve Problem Behavior with Clicker Training.

Please click image for further information

How different would the situation be if she had done something about the issue when it first started:

1. The screaming would have never developed in this extreme way
2. The screaming habits the birds had already developed could have been vastly improved
3. The neighbor would have seen her efforts to do something about the problem and would perhaps have been more tolerant
4. Apart from the training we could have implemented other measures, such as sight and sound barriers, to reduce the sound hassle to others

Of course I will do all I can to help her in the little time she has left.

But, oh, how I really wish that you all will be smarter when you start running into issues with your birds and get help early on, before things escalate to the point of disaster.

As you can imagine I am still reeling. It . . . more]]> Hello my dear Parrot Friends. Thank you so very much for your overwhelming show of support. I know it won’t make Mr. Darcy alive again, but it is a comfort to know that he was loved by so many of you.

As you can imagine I am still reeling. It hurts so much. Yet, I cannot fathom a life without him. Any moment I expect to hear his claws clicking on the tile floor as he goes in search of me, to be lifted up by his beak with a big welcoming greeting & hugs & kisses, before he proceeds to go for a nap snuggled against me.

Nevertheless, I did promise you a final poop update to help you and me to get closure in some way, even though I will miss my dear boy for the rest of my life.

If you are a bit squeamish or easily grossed out, you may want to stop reading here. I will be giving you the whole honest recount of the events of yesterday morning. Some of it is not that pretty.

I understand if you will not read it and for those who won’t I want to thank all of you now for taking such a dedicated interest in Mr. Darcy during the many weeks of his illness and for continuing to send us both love, light, prayers & energy. It did and does make a difference.

The Final Poop Update

I suppose the end really started a few days ago when Mr. Darcy kept crawling under my bed. The space there is very tight and confined. It was suggested that he may be reacting to weather conditions and barometric pressure, but my thought was that dying animal seek out hiding places. Because of safety considerations for Mr. Darcy and Lily the Congo African Grey girl who also likes to hide under the bed, I took to confining him to a carrier for the last two nights. At this point he was constantly pooping small amounts of diarrhea so that for sanitary reasons I could not have him in bed. Remember, he had multi-resistant bacteria that are also dangerous to humans. My vet had been preaching to me for a while about not having him so close to me in bed. Also both of us slept there so restlessly and we both needed the rest for our strength.

That evening, I took him into the bathroom with me for a short while while I was filling the bathtub and then by his own wish transferred him to the bedroom perch while I was having my bath. When I entered the bedroom that evening and looked after Little Lottchen who is also ill and also in the bed room, Mr. Darcy immediately reacted to my voice and crawled out from under the bed looking for me like he always did. We had been only separated for half an hour but he always wanted to be with me.
Since I have been on a leave of absence from work for a while we did have the luxury for the last months of spending every waking and most sleeping moments together.

I took him with a fleece rag to protect the bedding into bed with me while I was watching TV and cuddled with him for a while. Then I put him into his carrier for the night.

The next morning I could see that during the night, he had many many squirts of diarrhea but no real poop. I put him on the scale and saw that his weight remained constant from the day before, but his crop had not emptied properly and he was still not defecating. I fed the other fids and him, but he refused to eat or drink. While I was giving him his meds and cuddling him again, he turned his head all of a sudden to face me straight in the eye and gave me “The Look”. I don’t know how else to describe it. Any of you who had animals die with them probably know what I mean. it is a look, a glance, that clearly conveys that they are done with struggling and ready to leave this earth. I have seen it before and recognized it immediately. I selfishly and tearfully begged him to reconsider, told him I loved him and to please, please, please not give up.

As an answer he climbed from the backrest of my chair onto my lap and tucked his head under my right arm in clear solicitation of his tummy and cloaca massage which I gave him frequently to stimulate his intestines. He had gotten again some crusts on his cloaca, which came and went during the whole time he was ill and even before that. I softened them with vaseline as before and carefully picked away at them to make sure the cloaca opening was clear from obstructions. As I massaged, felt around, and kept cleaning him, I noticed his cloaca opening had distended so the I could slip the tip of my forefinger in. I did this very carefully, to see if there was any obstruction there as well. The vet & I had been doing this manoeuvre with a Q-tip on several occasions. Sometimes we were lucky enough to trigger him to defecate.

Well yesterday when I did it with my forefinger, it worked wonders. All of a sudden he let go and a huge amount of poop flew out of him – with it a huge one of those “thingies” that I had told you about on quite a few occasions before. We had not seen any of those for about two weeks and thought that this was a good sign. The lab had determined them to be solidified inflammation slime material with fibrin – a sign that his intestinal lining was battling with something. Thus, no thingies should have meant his intestines were calming down. It turns out this was just the quiet before the storm. The “thingy” that passed was almost the size of the tip of my forefinger as you can see in the image.

I was so glad that the blockage had passed and thought this was really good.

I took him to the kitchen sink for a clean-up and noticed that he seemed somewhat exhausted like after child birth – except that he birthed a “thingy”. After clean-up I put him back on his chair-back where he even ate a bit from the food bowl that I had attached to my chair for him together with his perch. Altogether he seemed a bit tired but doing ok.

I proceeded to clean myself up, rinsed the thingy, took a photo of it to show you guys. Then went back to my computer to get it ready for posting together with my poop update. As I was finalizing the image, Mr. Darcy climbed back onto my lap and presented his butt again for further massage. I thought that maybe not all had come out yet. So I placed another rag over my lap under him, and rubbed his tummy some more. I also went back to manipulating his cloaca which resulted in another huge bowel movement. Altogether he must have excreted at least 200 ml of poop. I took him back to the kitchen sink for clean up. He had really soiled himself on that one so I carefully turned him on his side and then even on his back to gently run some warm water over him. He does normally not like to be turned on his back, but he did not struggle. At the same time I noticed he was fisting his feet. Writing and reading this is taking longer than the seconds it took for this to happen.

I grabbed a towel to dry him with, sat back down at my desk and called my vet whom I luckily was able to reach immediately. She explained that significant volume losses can cause cardio-vascular problems. They see this in egg binding cases a lot and give an infusion before removing the egg to ward off such issues. Needless to say it was too late for this and I had not seen this huge defecation coming. She said, if he was not better in two hours to bring him in for an infusion and to keep him warm without overheating. I told her I had him lying on me so I would notice if the heat lamp got too hot. She replied that body warmth was great.

We hung up and I took him to the sofa with me covering us with a blanket for extra warmth. He seemed content. As I kept stroking Mr. Darcy I noticed that his rump felt colder. So I put my heat-frisbee into the microwave for a few minutes, wrapped it into a towel and placed it between my body and Mr. Darcy for extra warmth. Next his upper body started to get colder too. So I left the sofa and sat with him on my desk-chair where I have an infrared lamp duct-taped to a standing light for him.

I noticed his system crashing so I sprayed a homeopathic remedy (carbo vegetabilis) and Bach flowers (rescue remedy) into his beak. The homeopathic remedy often will revive a collapsed living being. But he reacted to neither. I considered taking him straight in to the vets. But then I paused and reconsidered: He had severely crashed and the vet is about an hours’ drive away. The trip in awfully cold winter weather, being bumped around in his carrier, could be the final straw on his severely compromised cardio-vascular system. There was a very high chance that he would not survive it. And I had to ask myself the question if I wanted him to die alone in his carrier on the way to the vets which he hates or resting on my chest with me holding him and telling him how much I love him. I decided the latter and resolved to take him in for the afternoon office hours, if he had remained stable until then.

Mr. Darcy was still awfully cold in spite of the three heat sources (me, the heat-frisbee and the IR lamp). And then he stretched his legs out behind him with his claws fisted. They were really stiff. After massaging his legs for a bit they loosened enough for me to tuck them back under him and quasi perch him on my hand as he loved to do.

He flapped his wings two times as if he were flying somewhere. Then his moved his tongue around a bit like he does when he tastes some yummy treat. And then softly, softly, like a whisper, I could feel his soul leave his body. It was 11:30 – not even an hour since I hung up with my vet.

The Aftermath

I held Mr. Darcy a little while longer, rocking him and myself and telling him how much I loved him. Then I called my vets and made arrangements to bring him in for an autopsy in the afternoon. I found him a large box, cushioned it with bunched up papers wrapped him in a soft fluffy bath towel and placed him in there. It is hard to explain, but that body is not him. And I really want to know what destroyed my love so beyond healing. It may also be important for my other flock members and maybe even for other parrots whom we may be able to help with that knowledge.

Far harder than giving up his body is to see all over the house little signs of our lives together and his illness. I start crying every time which is pretty much non-stop.

I know that over time the pain will not be quite so devastating. But I also know that I will miss him for the rest of my life. He was an incredibly special bird who chose to give his love and trust to me unreservedly in spite of what humans did to him.

Gratitude

• I am incredibly grateful for the time we had together, even if it was much too short. My hope had been that we would grow old together. Our three years that we had passed like the blink of an eye.
• I am also incredibly grateful to Mr. Darcy for the love he gave me and his ultimate loving act of protecting me from having to make that horrible final decision.
• I am grateful that we could experience his death together the way we did in such a gently loving way. He was special in life and special in the way he chose to die.

Instead of a photo, I am including my favourite video of him:

R.I.P. Mr. Darcy

19?? – January 22, 2013

You were and are deeply loved

Donations in Mr. Darcy’s name may be made via Paypal to my parrot NFP and will be used to cover vet costs and help for Mr. Darcy and other parrots in need.

I bought him in 2001 in Manhattan not knowing what I know now. . . . more]]> I thought maybe you’d like to know more about my African grey Hector. Little Hector is – as you can see – a big strapping (almost 600g) “stud” of a bird. This was not always like that.

I bought him in 2001 in Manhattan not knowing what I know now. Hector was handraised from egg and shipped as a baby from California to the store in NYC. There he was handraised with a crop tube. I saw this procedure the first time after I had been visiting him daily for about two weeks. It is brutal!

They grab the bird, shove the tube down his throat and squirt a syringe full of formula down. It takes seconds and is a far sight removed from the image of “loving handraising” that the marketers of handraised parrots would have us believe. As a result of this traumatic procedure, and also of being on display in a store where anyone could walk in and grope him, Hector was afraid of humans and had learned to bite hard by the time he moved in with me after weaning.

The food he was given in the store contained a mixture of seeds, colorful pellets and peanuts in the shell. Anyone who is the least bit knowledgable knows not to feed peanuts in the shell to parrots as they are known to be highly contaminated with aspergillus spores. When I took Hector in for an exam a few weeks later in Germany, it turned out that at his very young age he already had a full blown case of aspergillosis.

Whilst in the store, at the first signs of fledging they also clipped him severely. This resulted in him falling like a stone whenever he lost balance and splitting his chest open one morning. So here I was with this scared, injured, ill and biting bird acquired very expensively in a specialized parrot store. I adore Hector – no doubt. But I would have been far better of adopting and investing that money into healthcare and an aviary (which I did anyways, doubling the purchase price).

Hector is the reason why I started to explore species appropriate keeping and raising. I feel that the sale of such animals in stores benefits only the breeders and store owners, but neither the parent animals, the birds being sold or the buyers. In short, I think this kind of procedure is cruelty to animals and the marketing fraudulent.

Another side-effect of handraising is that birds raised in that way often have a weak immune system (as I learned later). Hector consequently caught any “bug” that was passing by. I remember one time when I was on a trip for a week. When I came back, his body was covered in puss plaques which the bird sitter unfortunately had not noticed. He almost died then. But he survived with a lot of love and care.

He has grown from being a single bird to having a mate and now lives in a small flock of eight grey with me. Those of you who have been following my stories know, that he is an amazing caretaker. More than once he has nursed critically ill African greys back to health by force feeding them, supporting & comforting them. Maybe he remembers how awful it is to be ill.

Well, my feathered darlings had gotten into the habit of loudly greeting the new day at an ungodly hour. <sigh>

I finally . . . more]]> As you know I have currently four Greenwing macaw parrots in my bedroom – unflighted / handicapped birds which cannot be safely placed in the bird hall, yet.

Well, my feathered darlings had gotten into the habit of loudly greeting the new day at an ungodly hour.  <sigh>

I finally decided to do something about it and for the last few days I have jumped out of bed and raced out of the room without a comment as soon as they started screaming.

Lo and behold this morning they were as quiet as little church mice. I woke up just after eight by myself (normal is 5:30 for me).

My little angels deserve extra pine nuts in copious amounts today.

You can find more information on anti-scream training in my book:
Screaming & Screeching: How to Solve Problem Behavior with Clicker Training

More Information