shylevon
07-17-2005, 07:06 PM
Finally, I am ready to tell the tale of how three little fighters came to be rescued by me. I mentioned them to no one, as I feared for their lives and didn’t want to upset anyone with news of their sudden passing. I have had them for six weeks now, and I am beginning to feel confident that they will endure, although I still awaken from sleep and dash down the stairs to their side if I hear any sound similar to a soft thump in their cages. They have been housed with my other birds for about a week now, and all seems well. Here is their story, long, sad, even horrifying, but it is a saga of strength and survival.
Over the past several months, I had been hearing chirping coming from the neighbor’s open balcony windows, and I wondered what types of birds lived there. I live in a townhouse complex, so the chirps bounced off the walls and I wasn’t quite sure where they came from. My birdies dutifully called back, and many days were spent between them, relaying stories of great adventures and tales of heroic deeds and secret missions. Of this, I am sure. Being the unsociable creature that I am I never inquired, until one day when I was walking to the store and a woman was standing outside on her deck.
‘What type of birds do you own,’ I asked, ‘as I have lovebirds and they enjoy talking to your birds.’ She had a larger parrot although I don’t recall what type she said he was, some budgies and some lovebirds. She was a breeder, she said, but she was getting out of lovebirds. She then proceeded to tell me that until recently, she had 12 or 15 lovebirds, but they were all dying and she had lost interest in saving them. She was going to be moving soon, and she figured the lovebirds would all be dead by that time.
Shocked, as you might imagine, I asked her what she thought was wrong with them, what had the vet said? No vet, she said, she couldn’t afford it with the impending move and she only had five lovebirds left anyway. I told her I would take over their care, if she were to give the few she had left to me. She seemed uninterested, but lead me into her home to check on the birds. I felt faint as I peered into the cages of the ones I could see. One appeared fairly healthy; but two were near death on the floor of the cage, huddled close to each other, lying in watery droppings that had not been cleaned in days. Vomit covered the face and chest of one of them and she seemed to be in serious distress. Both lay there with their beaks open, their chests moving only slightly as they gasped for tiny breathes of air. I whimpered. She told me that there was a baby and a hen in the nestbox, but that the father had died a week or so ago. She wanted to keep the healthy one and the contents of the nestbox, which I was not entirely convinced held any remnants of life at that point. All the budgies seemed healthy, but the lovebirds were in a desperate state.
Now, I would never consider taking a bird outside without the safety of a cage, but these birds had lost the will to live. The desire to ever take flight again had left them many days before. I scurried home, with my precious cargo clutched safely in my hands. I stopped in the house only long enough to grab the hospital cage, quickly call the vet, and I hurried off to my car.
The vet took one look at the two of them and told me all hope was lost. I asked her if there was anything to be done, and to try anything that would not cause them further pain. We carefully sponged the caked droppings and vomit from their dull feathers and tried to warm them as best we could. She injected medication and fluids, and gave me a prescription and food supplements. She said the prognosis was very grim and it was not worth the expense of keeping them in the busy clinic where they would surly perish.
I brought them home to die. I set them up in the small cage on my night table with a warm pad and a cover to keep them safe. I comforted myself with the thought that when they drew their last breath and closed their tired eyes and their tiny souls lifted from their tortured bodies, their heads would light on a clean soft towel, for the final time, not in the soupy wetness of their own feces at the bottom of a cage. These birds would die in peace, as much peace as I could give them.
Amazingly, they did not perish that first night, nor the next. They got stronger, they began to eat on their own, and they sang a quiet song that I could barely hear. And, every day they improved, and my optimism for them blossomed.
Perhaps three days after the rescue, I arrived home from work. As I came around the corner to my front door from the parking lot, the odd, cruel woman was standing on my doorstep. As I approached, she asked me how the birds were doing. ‘Better’, I said cautiously. I thought she might be here to collect them, seeing as they were miraculously still alive. Well, I was absolutely certain there had been no ice storm in he11 on that very day, nor would there be any in the near future and I was prepared to inform her that this would be a mandate for her to regain possession of those precious birdies. Regrettably, she was on my stoop and she was between the door and me, but as I sized her up I was confident I could take her, trusty supercape or not.
Rather than suggest such a thing she informed me that the momma bird had died. She flipped her wrist and I saw, for the first time, a tiny brown crumpled paper bag in her hand. ‘Did I want her?’ she asked me. I assumed she meant the body of the poor momma hen, and I envisioned thrashing the sh!t out of her now, just for sport and the pure pleasure of it. ‘Excuuuse me?’ I asked. ‘The baby bird,’ she said. She was not going to feed it, and it would surely die too. ‘Yes,’ I said, I would take it. She placed the crumpled weightless paper bag into my hand and walked past me. ‘I was going to leave it in your mailbox,’ she said, ‘I am glad you came home when you did.’ My mailbox? A tiny brown paper bag, rolled up tight at the top, in my brass mailbox in the 30 degree C heat. That’s about 90 degrees F for all you southerners. What a pleasant surprise that would have been to come home to.
I rushed into the house and carefully unrolled the top of the tattered bag. A tiny lifeless body lay within, no feathers, barely old enough for her eyes to have opened for the first time. She tumbled out of the bag onto my open palm and lay there motionless. I began to gasp, tears flowing down my face, enraged, I was too late. This little one was gone, cold, withered. But perhaps it sensed my emotion, or my grief, and with the last ounce of strength, the tiny toes of one foot stretched slowly open, then relaxed. She was alive, but only just. A small whimper of disbelief and hope escaped me, and ran from my home. I took no towel with me, no cage. I dashed for my car and raced down the road to the vet’s clinic. I held her tiny body to my chest and I hoped she could hear my heartbeat, my gasps for air and I cried, wiping tears away and praying I could make my destination in time and safely. I wanted her to feel life around her, not death, and I wanted her to fight for the life I was trying to pump from my body into hers. I became aware of the fact I had not made an appointment. I feared not, let them try to turn away a hysterical woman with a tiny baby in her hands. Just let them try.
Upon arrival at the vet’s the doctor said again, that there was no hope. Not for this little one, so tiny, and probably not even two weeks old. I told her the other two were doing better and that this one surely had the same ailment and would improve with the same treatment. ‘She is too tiny’, the vet told me. ‘We will do what we can if you want, but I believe it is futile.’ I had to leave her alone with the doctor; they would not let me stay, as I was too upset. Others were beginning to cry for me, strangers, as I walked past them wailing, wringing my hands with grief, and it would be best if I left. I was invited to come back in a couple of hours to visit with her. The clinic would call me at home if the end came too quickly for her.
When I did return, they showed me to the spot where my baby was laying, all alone in a huge incubator, the tiniest butterfly IV tube spiraling around her little leg, a tube down her throat. The pain I felt for her was palpable. The constriction in my chest, unbearable; my heart was breaking. I tried to steady myself, to calm my nerves, to pacify my rage. Never has a little birdie looked so small, so helpless, so very near to death’s door.
Two days later she began to improve. Tiny fighters, all three of them. The two older ones recovered a bit faster, but my little gal began to shuffle around in time. Her feathers began to emerge and they were a shiny dark greenish gray. I took her to work with me and we spent every hour together while I fed and cared for her. She weaned fairly early, considering her saga, but she never came to trust me. I did not want to force her to accept me; she had earned the right to never trust humans again if that was her choice.
Today, all tests are normal and I have begun to let go of the fear that they will perish suddenly regardless of my attempts to save them. The songs that escape them are louder, happier, if fact, I can hear them now. The horrid woman who denied them the basic necessities for life has moved from the neighborhood. I miss the calls of her dwindling flock, but I know her presence in the vicinity would have eaten at me like a cancer. I hope her other birds have survived, or found peace. I hope I never see her again. I hope she rots in he11. Surely she will.
If any of you are interested in seeing these heroic birdies, the album below has some pics of them.
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2123624317
Over the past several months, I had been hearing chirping coming from the neighbor’s open balcony windows, and I wondered what types of birds lived there. I live in a townhouse complex, so the chirps bounced off the walls and I wasn’t quite sure where they came from. My birdies dutifully called back, and many days were spent between them, relaying stories of great adventures and tales of heroic deeds and secret missions. Of this, I am sure. Being the unsociable creature that I am I never inquired, until one day when I was walking to the store and a woman was standing outside on her deck.
‘What type of birds do you own,’ I asked, ‘as I have lovebirds and they enjoy talking to your birds.’ She had a larger parrot although I don’t recall what type she said he was, some budgies and some lovebirds. She was a breeder, she said, but she was getting out of lovebirds. She then proceeded to tell me that until recently, she had 12 or 15 lovebirds, but they were all dying and she had lost interest in saving them. She was going to be moving soon, and she figured the lovebirds would all be dead by that time.
Shocked, as you might imagine, I asked her what she thought was wrong with them, what had the vet said? No vet, she said, she couldn’t afford it with the impending move and she only had five lovebirds left anyway. I told her I would take over their care, if she were to give the few she had left to me. She seemed uninterested, but lead me into her home to check on the birds. I felt faint as I peered into the cages of the ones I could see. One appeared fairly healthy; but two were near death on the floor of the cage, huddled close to each other, lying in watery droppings that had not been cleaned in days. Vomit covered the face and chest of one of them and she seemed to be in serious distress. Both lay there with their beaks open, their chests moving only slightly as they gasped for tiny breathes of air. I whimpered. She told me that there was a baby and a hen in the nestbox, but that the father had died a week or so ago. She wanted to keep the healthy one and the contents of the nestbox, which I was not entirely convinced held any remnants of life at that point. All the budgies seemed healthy, but the lovebirds were in a desperate state.
Now, I would never consider taking a bird outside without the safety of a cage, but these birds had lost the will to live. The desire to ever take flight again had left them many days before. I scurried home, with my precious cargo clutched safely in my hands. I stopped in the house only long enough to grab the hospital cage, quickly call the vet, and I hurried off to my car.
The vet took one look at the two of them and told me all hope was lost. I asked her if there was anything to be done, and to try anything that would not cause them further pain. We carefully sponged the caked droppings and vomit from their dull feathers and tried to warm them as best we could. She injected medication and fluids, and gave me a prescription and food supplements. She said the prognosis was very grim and it was not worth the expense of keeping them in the busy clinic where they would surly perish.
I brought them home to die. I set them up in the small cage on my night table with a warm pad and a cover to keep them safe. I comforted myself with the thought that when they drew their last breath and closed their tired eyes and their tiny souls lifted from their tortured bodies, their heads would light on a clean soft towel, for the final time, not in the soupy wetness of their own feces at the bottom of a cage. These birds would die in peace, as much peace as I could give them.
Amazingly, they did not perish that first night, nor the next. They got stronger, they began to eat on their own, and they sang a quiet song that I could barely hear. And, every day they improved, and my optimism for them blossomed.
Perhaps three days after the rescue, I arrived home from work. As I came around the corner to my front door from the parking lot, the odd, cruel woman was standing on my doorstep. As I approached, she asked me how the birds were doing. ‘Better’, I said cautiously. I thought she might be here to collect them, seeing as they were miraculously still alive. Well, I was absolutely certain there had been no ice storm in he11 on that very day, nor would there be any in the near future and I was prepared to inform her that this would be a mandate for her to regain possession of those precious birdies. Regrettably, she was on my stoop and she was between the door and me, but as I sized her up I was confident I could take her, trusty supercape or not.
Rather than suggest such a thing she informed me that the momma bird had died. She flipped her wrist and I saw, for the first time, a tiny brown crumpled paper bag in her hand. ‘Did I want her?’ she asked me. I assumed she meant the body of the poor momma hen, and I envisioned thrashing the sh!t out of her now, just for sport and the pure pleasure of it. ‘Excuuuse me?’ I asked. ‘The baby bird,’ she said. She was not going to feed it, and it would surely die too. ‘Yes,’ I said, I would take it. She placed the crumpled weightless paper bag into my hand and walked past me. ‘I was going to leave it in your mailbox,’ she said, ‘I am glad you came home when you did.’ My mailbox? A tiny brown paper bag, rolled up tight at the top, in my brass mailbox in the 30 degree C heat. That’s about 90 degrees F for all you southerners. What a pleasant surprise that would have been to come home to.
I rushed into the house and carefully unrolled the top of the tattered bag. A tiny lifeless body lay within, no feathers, barely old enough for her eyes to have opened for the first time. She tumbled out of the bag onto my open palm and lay there motionless. I began to gasp, tears flowing down my face, enraged, I was too late. This little one was gone, cold, withered. But perhaps it sensed my emotion, or my grief, and with the last ounce of strength, the tiny toes of one foot stretched slowly open, then relaxed. She was alive, but only just. A small whimper of disbelief and hope escaped me, and ran from my home. I took no towel with me, no cage. I dashed for my car and raced down the road to the vet’s clinic. I held her tiny body to my chest and I hoped she could hear my heartbeat, my gasps for air and I cried, wiping tears away and praying I could make my destination in time and safely. I wanted her to feel life around her, not death, and I wanted her to fight for the life I was trying to pump from my body into hers. I became aware of the fact I had not made an appointment. I feared not, let them try to turn away a hysterical woman with a tiny baby in her hands. Just let them try.
Upon arrival at the vet’s the doctor said again, that there was no hope. Not for this little one, so tiny, and probably not even two weeks old. I told her the other two were doing better and that this one surely had the same ailment and would improve with the same treatment. ‘She is too tiny’, the vet told me. ‘We will do what we can if you want, but I believe it is futile.’ I had to leave her alone with the doctor; they would not let me stay, as I was too upset. Others were beginning to cry for me, strangers, as I walked past them wailing, wringing my hands with grief, and it would be best if I left. I was invited to come back in a couple of hours to visit with her. The clinic would call me at home if the end came too quickly for her.
When I did return, they showed me to the spot where my baby was laying, all alone in a huge incubator, the tiniest butterfly IV tube spiraling around her little leg, a tube down her throat. The pain I felt for her was palpable. The constriction in my chest, unbearable; my heart was breaking. I tried to steady myself, to calm my nerves, to pacify my rage. Never has a little birdie looked so small, so helpless, so very near to death’s door.
Two days later she began to improve. Tiny fighters, all three of them. The two older ones recovered a bit faster, but my little gal began to shuffle around in time. Her feathers began to emerge and they were a shiny dark greenish gray. I took her to work with me and we spent every hour together while I fed and cared for her. She weaned fairly early, considering her saga, but she never came to trust me. I did not want to force her to accept me; she had earned the right to never trust humans again if that was her choice.
Today, all tests are normal and I have begun to let go of the fear that they will perish suddenly regardless of my attempts to save them. The songs that escape them are louder, happier, if fact, I can hear them now. The horrid woman who denied them the basic necessities for life has moved from the neighborhood. I miss the calls of her dwindling flock, but I know her presence in the vicinity would have eaten at me like a cancer. I hope her other birds have survived, or found peace. I hope I never see her again. I hope she rots in he11. Surely she will.
If any of you are interested in seeing these heroic birdies, the album below has some pics of them.
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2123624317