A sun conure story

[Birdman666]

Papaya, my little sun conure was given to me as a gift, and at the time I knew very little about birds, other than the fact that the seven large parrots (2 macaws, 5 amazons) we had when my family and I lived in Venezuela used to bully me mercilessly as a child. I couldn't handle any of them.

So, I immediately went to work researching parrots, and their care on the internet, and I happened across an ongoing post from a guy who had just inherited his father's 30 year old sun conure, who was having a serious problem with the bird.

His dad had gotten the bird when this guy was a very young child. He related that the conure was apparently a very young escaped pet (he still had his baby colors) and it was winter time and snowing. The bird wasn't a terribly coordinated flyer, and landed in their yard. He just plopped down in the snow in front of his father. His dad picked the bird up, dusted the snow off him, and took him inside. The little bird immediately nestled down inside his dad's shirt. His dad was a wood worker, and was so taken by this little bird, that the next day he built the bird an elaborate perch set up, complete with multiple levels, swings, and ladders to climb. They looked for the owner of the bird, but no one came forward. The bird grew up uncaged, living on the perch set up his dad had built for him. His father never named the bird. He just called him "little bird."

The little bird and his father quickly became inseparable. The bird would sound the alarm when he heard his father's truck approaching, and used to greet his father before the kid did, and fly to his shoulder the second he walked in the door. He confessed that, growing up he HATED that bird. He was jealous of the bird, who got so much of his father's attention, that it felt as though his father loved the little bird more than he loved his own kids.

Then one day, many years later, he got a call from an ambulance dispatcher. They were at his father's residence. They regretted to inform him that his father had died of a heart attack. Ambulance attendants were at his house, but were having trouble removing the body, because there was a little pet bird guarding the body, and it was dive bombing and biting every time they went close it. They didn't want to have to hurt the bird. Could you please do something to control him? Well, of course, knowing how much the bird meant to his father, he picked up a cage, and immediately went out to the house. And there was the little bird, still sitting on his dead father's shoulder, pressed up against his neck, obviously distressed by the intruders. He was able to calm the bird down, and step him up, and managed to wrestle him into the cage. The little bird had never been caged before in his life. The ambulance attendants then left with his father's body...

Over the next several days, the little bird became seriously depressed. He got on the parrot forum because the bird had simply stopped eating or drinking, and was systematically tearing out all his pretty feathers. I followed this story for 3 or 4 days, as they tried all sorts of things to save the little birds life... on the 4th day, the son confessed, that he always understood how much his father loved that little bird, but he never really understood how much the little bird had loved his father.

He thanked everyone for trying to help and then informed us that the elderly little bird, without his lifelong partner in crime, had apparently simply lost it's will to live, and had now passed on. The bird had plucked itself nearly bald before he died. He had decided that the bird would be buried with his father, and they had an open casket funeral, with the bird placed under his father's hand, with just his head sticking out, so that no one could see how badly he had plucked himself.

Everyone agreed it was fitting...

Any one who tells you they don't mourn, and they don't feel love this deeply... tell them they are completely mistaken.

And if they ask you how you know that? Just tell them a little bird told you so...

When they love, they love completely.

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

Thank you SOOOO much for this incredible beautiful story.

As sad as it is to hear of any loss of life - I can only imagine how much that father and his bird had fulfilled each others life. How heartwarming it is to hear of such a wonderful bond.

Like you said - "when they love, they love completely". I couldn't have said it better myself.

Thank you so much for sharing this story.

 

[Kyoto]

I hope you don't mind mark, but I just had to share this story with my friends on Facebook. A truly beautiful bond they had <3 thank you.

 

[Birdman666]

It's funny, but this must've been 18 years ago now, and I still haven't forgotten it. That story has stayed with me all these years, perhaps because of the bond Py and I shared with that.

I actually built a playstand like the one he described in his posts, and Py lived outside the cage on it for many, many years. (Inca and Demitre eventually ended up taking over that playstand several years later.)

This thing:



As many of you may know, Py was fully flighted, and was an outside the cage, out and about trained, free flighted bird. In fact, he once flew off on my ex wife. Flew to the end of the block, and waited for me to come home. I got the call at about 7:00 that "your bird just flew away." I didn't get off work until 9:00 that night, and didn't get home until after 10:00... and it was torture.

But there was py, flying from tree to tree alongside my car, calling for me when I came home. Opened the door to my car, and he landed on my shoulder. "Hi Papaya! How's my bird?" (It's about the only thing he knew how to say.) He was as sick of my ex-wife's BS as I was at that point, I guess.

He was my introduction to parrots, that led me to all the others. Py was the first of my super bonded velcro birds. I LOVED HIM DEARLY, AND I KNOW I WAS LOVED AS MUCH...

Sadly, he was hit by a car one day when we were out freeflying... He flew back to me low across a parking lot, and that was it...

I could see it coming, but couldn't do anything to prevent it from happening. He was just 12 years old when he died.

 

[Doublete]

Ok mark.
I'm at work in the kitchen and I'm crying.

A warning would've been nice!

 

[PetoftheDay]

Aww, lovely story, and true sentiment. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

I cried too. But they weren't sad tears.

I too had to share this story. I read it over the phone to a friend of mine. I told her I could totally see me and Skittles in that story. It hit me right in the heart. But I'm so glad I read it.

 

[Nakiska]

Gaaaggghhhh! Beautiful! Sad, heartwarming and soo true! Wiping tears here.

As we all know pet's can also mourn the loss of each other, my example is with our dogs. Cedar and Dolly were sisters, never ever had a day apart, for 8 years. In January, Dolly suddenly became very ill, liver cancer. We did all we could and 2 weeks after diagnosis, Dolly passed away while I was at work with her sister by her side.

Cedar didn't react when we took Dolly up on the hill of our property to bury her, but when we came back down to the house, without Dolly...Cedar started bawling, crying howl whining like I've never heard a dog sound in my entire life!

I remember saying through tears to myself and husband...Oh Cedar...baby..stooooop...it was killing me.

Happily, I can report that Cedar is doing well and we all got through mourning. She was never alone as we have 3 other dogs. They didn't mourn the way Cedar did loosing her sister however. They clearly had a special bond with each other.

Thanks for sharing this beautiful post. I too have a sun conure and this really hits the heart!

Toni

 

[Birdman666]

When Rachel died, her blue nape went from room to room calling for her by name for weeks. "Rachel! Rachel! Rachel? Rachel!" I was on the phone with her mom, and we were both just dying...

 

[Giggleagain]

Thank you for the sad, though heartwarming stories, Birdman. You have me going too, for all the beautiful love between animals and their people. For those I lost and loved, and loved me back. I need to go read something else now or I'll start bawling, and this old hag doesn't bawl.

 

[Allee]

Mark, thank you for the beautiful stories. Very nice timing. They definitely mourn, I'm seeing it first hand.

This is awful of me, but I for one, would love to hear more about the first flock who bullied you in Venezuela.

 

[Birdman666]

Mark, thank you for the beautiful stories. Very nice timing. They definitely mourn, I'm seeing it first hand.

This is awful of me, but I for one, would love to hear more about the first flock who bullied you in Venezuela.

Nothing much to tell.

We inherited the flock when we moved into the house. The zons were wild caught DYH'S. We also had a wild caught B&G and Greenwing that lived in our mango tree.

In Venezuela they generally didn't bother with flights. You clipped the birds wings and set them down in the tree. So, at least until the primaries grew back, they had to stay put, which gave you about six months to make friends and tame them down...

These two were semi tame. In fact, the greenwing broke two of my dad's fingers.

I was seven years old at the time, and none of those birds would let me get anywhere near them. I didn't understand anything about bluffing at the time, and basically, these birds weren't bluffing anyway... they were pretty much flesh eaters.

Which makes it all the more odd that I turned into such a fanatical parrot person...

 

[Birdman666]

We actually brougnt my Mom's favorite DYH back with us. Sugar... She couldn't bear to part with him. So we imported him.

By the time he got through customs and quarantine, he was not the same bird. He was an ANGRY DYH...

We had him for another 20 plus years, though he never once allowed me to handle him in all that time...

And oddly enough, I can go and pick up even the aggressive ones now. I just didn't know enough then, to work with him. It's a shame really, cuz things would have turned out differently for him... if I had known.

But I was a kid. All I knew about that bird was don't get your fingers within range. Sit and talk to him. From a distance...

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

Some of the people closest to me in my life now are people I could not stand when I first met them or hung around them. Life is funny that way.

People we expect would be our friends - have no clue while people we could never see ourselves associating with seem to understand us better than we think. Same is true with animals, I find.

 

[Allee]

That's actually pretty amazing, Mark. Was the flock in Venezuela your family's first experience with parrots? How did Sugar treat your mom?

Semi tame, only broke two of your dad's fingers, sorry but I had to laugh a little.

 

[Birdman666]

That's actually pretty amazing, Mark. Was the flock in Venezuela your family's first experience with parrots? How did Sugar treat your mom?

Semi tame, only broke two of your dad's fingers, sorry but I had to laugh a little.

Well, my dad tried to get the greenwing down from the mango tree, and the greenwing was rather insistent that he was fine right where he was. Breaking my Dad's fingers was just one of those reactionary things. He bent the fingers in a direction god never intended them to go... All he was really doing at the time, was pushing my dad's fingers away with his beak. He just chose to push them backward a little bit further than fingers are actually supposed to go backward... THAT SNAP, CRACKLE, POP! YOU HEAR IS NOT RICE KRISPIES! (Another Capt. Obvious moment: The macaws were stick handled from that point forward, by the adults. I never got near either of them. I didn't know anything about "macaw bluffing" either. I saw that beak and remembered, snap, crackle, pop! So, my, my how things have changed... Why then, could I later in life just walk up to any old macaw, even the aggressive ones, and just pick them up?! I've never really figured that out... wondered about it for years.)

My mom was the only one who could handle Sugar after we got him out of quarantine. He was the one bird that was friendly to just about everyone when we decided to bring him home...

Years later, of course I understand why. We were ignorant at the time. Sugar had a flock. Sugar was outside year round. Sugar got stuffed in a cargo hold for an 18 hour flight, then got abandoned and stuck in a 1960's quarantine station in a tiny little cage for about a month...

When we finally did bring him home, he wasn't the same bird. He never really adapted. He actually ended up being donated to a zoo aviary, because he was so unhappy living indoors. He got his flock back, and his outdoor enclosure. Come to think of it, he probably met/hung out with Robin Williams' bird. SAME ZOO!

Like I said, after that experience, I've always thought it was odd that I would become such a parrot person... but there's so much that I know now, that I WISH I knew when we had Sugar. Things might have been different. We were ignorant back then. Nobody really new. Parrot enrichment is something humans have been learning as they go along.

 

[Skittys_Daddy]

I can't tell you how often I've said that to myself. That I wish I had known then what I know now about birds, so many of the poor decisions I made might have been better handled.

We all can look back and say that about our lives. But the truth is, it's often those ignorant or poor decisions that shape the knowledge we have today. We learn and we grow as a result. Had we not gone through what we've all gone through, who's to say we would know what we do now.

 

[Birdman666]

I'm content with saying, "I'm less ignorant today than I was yesterday... but there was a time when I was horribly ignorant."

The ignorant are usually NOT the ones who end up suffering for their ignorance.

Usually it's those unfortunate souls who come in contact with the ignorant that suffer for their ignorance.

Volunteering down at the bird rescue, only served to reinforce that point!

 

[MyFlock]

You are very wise Birdman666, that was incredibly beautiful but heartbreaking at the same time. My Jenday is devoted to me, my Sunday to my Jenday. I could never part with either of them even though some days they can get on my last nerve.

My Jenday is very empathetic, when I'm feeling ill she will be incredibly quiet and let me rest, she reads my body language to a tee. I love her so much.

 

[Birdman666]

During the absolute worst part of my very, very ugly divorce, when my ex was at her most viscious, and trying to take custody of my daughter from me, I had a complete emotional breakdown...

My little sun conure did every single funny thing he could think of to try and make me laugh. And when that didn't work, he quite literally climbed up on my shoulder, and started licking away my tears...

They are extremely empathic...

My ex-wife was persona non grata for a very long time in my house.

My red lored amazon went BIG BIRD at the site of her, and started doing the "amazon line of death dance." She KNEW how much just being around that woman upset me, and she wasn't having any of it.... And my ex was absolutely terrified of her.

Guess which bird I took with me when I picked up my kid?!

Incidentally, I was awarded full custody.