Zap!

[JamesC]

I feel so bad tonight. For whatever reason, the static electricity tonight is really bad here. I keep a humidifier in my place but I've been zapping and crackling all night. And little Sidney got the worst of it. He was playing on me and I needed to get up. Without thinking, I held him towards his cage and when the poor guy touched his beak to step down KZZZZAP! It was a powerful zap too. He squealed and hunkered down real low and rocked back and forth towards my hand a few times making this muttering/unhappy sound before climbing up inside and away from me. Gosh I felt so horrible. For him that had to have been shocking and a bit painful. I saw the arc leap from his beak to the cage and it was probably about a quarter of an inch long. Fortunately it only took a couple of minutes for him to get back to his normal self. Can laugh a bit about it now but I still feel awful for not thinking of touching the cage with my hand first.

 

[aliray]

Wow I have never heard of that happening before. I know when we used to live up north in the winter we used to have problems at time with static shocks. Thank heavens it doesn't seem to happen here in Fla. I never would have considered the bird getting a shock. Glad he is alright

 

[WharfRat]

Wow, never heard/thought of that before!!! If I did that to one of the GW's I DON'T EVEN wanna know what they'd do to me!!!!:11:

 

[JamesC]

The air was super dry yesterday. I went through my humidifier's entire supply of water in under 24 hours. Usually it lasts a lot longer than that. But today the humidity was a little higher and not even a tingle at home. Work was still charged up a bit, though.

Fortunately Sid does not seem have suffered any harm. He was his normal, demanding, into everything self this evening.

I think I'm going to start doubling the dryer sheets when I do clothes for the rest of this winter.

 

[MeganMango]

I zapped Mango once when he went to step up, he chomped me really good. I couldnt really blame him though, and I was worried we would have problems with step up, but he seems to have forgotten. We get bad static here too, I keep putting my finger in a glass of water to discharge, it doesnt hurt so bad.

 

[Remy]

LOL poor birdy has no idea what it is!

It's been staticky here too, but I have managed not to shock Darcy! I've been shocking his cage every morning though, after I take off his staticky blanket! A couple weeks ago my bed was staticky in the dark, and I didn't feel the shocks, but I actually saw the sparks!

 

[bkparrot]

ouch thats painful for everyone. it is dry here even with the humidity. Just have to be more careful or get chomped... lol

 

[Sweetie]

I blame static electricity for our older Meyer's aggressive behavior. When he was about 2 (about 8 years ago) I accidentally zapped him on the beak when he was stepping up. I used to always touch his metal latch before having him step up to discharge any electricity before I would pick him up since for some reason i am the most static charged person i know. For some reason when he stepped up and reached out with his beak he still got zapped because I felt it. He seemed suprised but there was no ill effect. I googled anti static mats, etc. and tried to ensure it would not happen again but a few months later it did and after that he will no longer step up and if he does he will immediately start biting and I mean viciously...not just clamping down but numerous bites while grinding down. He would do this with me and my husband. It got to the point we could not trust him not to bite us so we get him where he needs to be with a stick. He has no issues getting up or down from a stick and we are thankful when we got him the pet store recommended we always keep him stick trained. We purchased another Meyer (Sweetie) unexpectedly (he was returned to the store by a prior owner and i fell in love) about 7 years ago. They both have separate cages and play gyms and we cannot let them interact at all because Rocky always become very aggressive and acts like he wants to kill Sweetie.

Long and short of it is we noticed a severe impact on our Meyer after being zapped by static and cannot think of anything else that would have caused such an immediate behavioral change but it's like he thinks we purposefully shocked him and we cannot find a way for him to get over it.

Sweetie's mom