But hopefully in a good way! As a lot of you guys know, I'm a softie and I often get asked to take in exotic animals that friends or acquaintances can no longer care for. Usually this entails reptiles and/or amphibians, but Friday I got a very unusual and difficult request.
A girl, Lisa, that I know from the train rides home, and who works in the Women's studies at my school, asked me if I could take her African grey parrot. Apparently this bird was originally bought for her mom's second husband, but they tired of it and gave it to the grandmother, and now the bird was living with my friend and the grandma...Lisa estimated it's around 20-25 years old. Baby, the parrot, had not been handled in years, and Lisa knew he needed to go elsewhere. I am by no means a bird expert, but I have a working knowledge of them and generally have good luck with rescues. I told her that I needed as much information about Baby and his/her (gender unknown) history as possible, and would need to come meet the bird and see how it reacted to me and my fiance before I could give her an answer.
She sent me pictures of a healthy, but bored, grey parrot in what looked like a parakeet cage (2 feet tall, 1.5 wide, and 1 or so deep) with plain dowel perches and no toys at all. She said they didn't give him toys because he chewed them up.....that's what parrots do!
So yesterday I met Baby- the cage was even smaller than it looked in the pictures, and the door was way way too small for Baby to even fit through. Lisa said he'd been in that cage for a few years, and had had a smaller one before that...ugh. Regardless, he babbled at us and seemed quite curious. Lisa got a box and encouraged us to take him right away. Fortunately, I had found a good parrot cage on Craigslist, so I called the seller and asked if I could see the cage right away. We took Baby and grabbed the cage on the way home, along with a pit stop at Petsmart for heavy-duty parrot toys.
Baby is scheduled to see my exotics vet next Tuesday - it was the earliest available appointment. I want to get his nails and wings trimmed and possibly his beak will need filing...he had nothing to chew on except the walls and a black cuttlefish bone.....and I will probably need bloodwork done to make sure his liver and kidneys are working well and he isn't nutritionally deficient.
He's really curious and laid-back. He took treats of carrots, broccoli and banana from my hands, but freaks out if I try to touch him, so it will be a long road of patience and stamina to get him accustomed to touch and coming out of the cage. Right now he seems extremely confused with all the space he has and has been flapping his wings and climbing all over. I hope this works out well for both myself and Baby...he's incredibly beautiful and I've always wanted an African grey. I always said that if I ever got a parrot it would be a grey, but I never expected to be given one at this time in my life. I don't have the most time in the world, but it will definitely be more time and attention than he was getting. My goal is for Baby to be able to come out and sit on a play gym while I do office work or take a bath, and for him to accept handling so he can be carried from room to room.
So here are the pictures I was sent, so you can get an idea of what he'd been living like:
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