Birds

[ivybgreenflower]

Man, birds these days.
A few weeks ago we had to take in my boyfriend's girl parakeet, Speedy, to an emergency vet, because the night before his mother let a stray cat into the house, and it took a nice swipe at her little belly. She had a huge gaping gash in her side, exposing her... something cavity, I dunno, something to do with the lungs. It was so bad they had to knock her out and give her stitches, and for two weeks he had to give her antibiotics every six hours.
Then last night one of mine, Rocco, flew into the ceiling fan and gave himself a huge bruise on his face. We took him to the vet today, who clipped his wings so I could catch him (I was a half hour late for our appointment because I couldn't grab him) and we have to give him some sort of eye drops (uh, eye drops for a hole in the head exposing his ear? If they say so...) once a day for a week.

In both cases we got so lucky, Speedy could easily have died and Rocco could have broken a wing, or lost an eye (his eyelid even has a bruise). We're going to have to take Mookie to have his wings clipped so he doesn't fly around the house and make poor Rocco fly after him and fall.

I didn't sleep all night worrying about Rocco, I'm so glad he's okay. We really didn't need that 70-something bucks for the visit, but eh, whatcha gonna do.

-12:00 PM

Comments

[oreohmygosh.livejournal.com]

How can you see a bruise on a bird? Wouldn't the feathers cover it up?

[ivybgreenflower]

Since he hit the fan blade, his feathers came off in kind of a line (so it looked like a cut rather than a bruise until the vet pushed the feathers away and showed me). Bird feathers come off very easily and it doesn't really bother them too much, they grow back pretty quickly. They had to pull off some of Speedy's feathers to do her stitches, and she didn't even look upset, and they've already grown back in. Aaaand now I'm rambling :D

[oreohmygosh.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting that bird feathers pull out easily. I wonder why...*ponders*

[ivybgreenflower]

I guess it's like hair... it's not pleasant to lose it, but it's not catastrophic, and they pull their own feathers out when they preen to make themselves look pretty. I guess.