Holy cow... this was not the best bird week. The weekend before last, the boys & I visited the bird store. This was our first trip without my wife. Apparently, if she isn't holding the cage in the car, they get motion sickness. This was a little unsettling in itself. Birds vomiting is never a good sign.
Once we got to the bird store, I started talking to the employees. We chat about birds a lot. They're good ppl. One of them pointed out that Beaker had some stress bars. To be honest, I wasn't familiar with them at all. Most likely, they're from weening or the move from the store to our home. I can't help that nagging feeling in the back of my skull that questions whether they're taken care of or not, though.
So we move into this weekend. I'm already feeling a little on edge with the bird situation. Beaker starts honking. By honking, at the end of his, "where the heck are you?" call, there's a little goose honk. It sounds like he's going hoarse. It's actually really cute.... until I start looking it up on the internet. Then I start worrying about respiratory stuff. No problem, though. It's before noon on Saturday. I call up the vet. This is where I go into hyper-panic mode. They explain this can actually be the first signs of an upper-respiratory infection. These spread very quickly in birds and she instructs me to head to the emergency vet pronto since they're about to close.
My wife is teaching an all day class to 50 elementary kids at this point, so I pack the boys up and prepare for them to get sick the whole way there. I'll make this long story just a little less long. Beaker was fine. I got what amounted to some very expensive pictures of his lungs. Since the tech and vet spent more time playing with the birds than examining them, I asked for discount. They weren't keen on that idea, though ;-).
Alright, I just needed to type out my sigh of relief. Hope all is well with you other bird people.
-Joel
PS I want my Saturday back.
Once we got to the bird store, I started talking to the employees. We chat about birds a lot. They're good ppl. One of them pointed out that Beaker had some stress bars. To be honest, I wasn't familiar with them at all. Most likely, they're from weening or the move from the store to our home. I can't help that nagging feeling in the back of my skull that questions whether they're taken care of or not, though.
So we move into this weekend. I'm already feeling a little on edge with the bird situation. Beaker starts honking. By honking, at the end of his, "where the heck are you?" call, there's a little goose honk. It sounds like he's going hoarse. It's actually really cute.... until I start looking it up on the internet. Then I start worrying about respiratory stuff. No problem, though. It's before noon on Saturday. I call up the vet. This is where I go into hyper-panic mode. They explain this can actually be the first signs of an upper-respiratory infection. These spread very quickly in birds and she instructs me to head to the emergency vet pronto since they're about to close.
My wife is teaching an all day class to 50 elementary kids at this point, so I pack the boys up and prepare for them to get sick the whole way there. I'll make this long story just a little less long. Beaker was fine. I got what amounted to some very expensive pictures of his lungs. Since the tech and vet spent more time playing with the birds than examining them, I asked for discount. They weren't keen on that idea, though ;-).
Alright, I just needed to type out my sigh of relief. Hope all is well with you other bird people.
-Joel
PS I want my Saturday back.
.....
