Day 13

6-9-10

Today was a nice day, and very relaxing (sortof) because we did only house calls all day. Dr. Dan started his practice in the back of a van, so he tries to keep offering that service for his clients’ convenience. We traveled to the house of an elderly lady to do a beak, nail, and feather trim on her Amazon parrot. Dr. Dan coaxed the parrot onto his hand and wrapped him in a towel; however the bird was NOT happy and voiced his opinion of us very loudly. Dr. Dan restrained the bird while I did the nail and feather trim, and then he proceeded to do the beak trim while I restrained. We noticed its beak had a large crack in it, and Dr. Dan was hoping it wouldn’t be a problem since it was an old crack. Wrong! While he was trimming it, it cracked all the way up into the cere (the most proximal part of the beak – closest to the bird’s face)… and then there was blood… a lot of blood. Plus the bird was screaming, and it only got louder when the beak cracked. For about 30 seconds, it was pure chaos and Dr. Dan’s daughter gasped and said “oh my god it’s bleeding!” so then the client came rushing in, along with her daughter, and the whole thing became one big bloody mess! Dr. Dan and I got everyone calmed down, including the bird, and loaded him up into the van to bring him back to the clinic. There, Dr. Dan placed the bird under general anesthesia and repaired his beak with epoxy, while I monitored its anesthesia. The parrot’s beak looked as good as new when Dr. Dan was finished, and I’m sure its owners were pleased because he waived they’re appointment fee.

While we were at the clinic, we got the results from the fox’s rabies testing. Luckily, she was negative for rabies and we didn’t have to pass around the post exposure prophylaxis cool-aid. I am still glad we went forward with the euthanasia and submission of the head for testing. Better safe than sorry, when you’re dealing with a 100% fatal zoonotic disease.

Our last appointment for the day was at the home of a young lady who owned two sun conures. One of them was named Loki, and the other was Jack. We grabbed Jack first because he actually wanted to be held. We did a wing and nail trim, and a physical exam on Jack with no problems; however, Loki was a different story. Loki had not been handled nearly as much as Jack because she was a new bird, and was very scared of us. Dr. Dan is especially good with timid birds, and after a little chase, he had her in a towel. She started screaming as soon as he had her restrained and continued screaming for the entire process. When we were done, Dr. Dan placed her on the floor and asked her to step up onto his hand. When placed on the floor, a bird that can’t fly will do anything possible to get to higher ground. Even if the bird is scared of you, it usually will not hesitate to use you to get to higher ground. It’s instinctual… get higher or be eaten by something on the ground. Something we didn’t expect occurred when we put her back on top of her cage with Jack. The once sweet Jack became very aggressive. Evidently he did not appreciate us making his new mate scream like that! He actually pushed her behind him and came charging at Dr. Dan with his beak open and his wings spread! All I have to say is that some birds are definitely smarter than we think.