by cmsellers » Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:10 am
So, today I had one of my birds, whom I refer to here as "J," on my wrist, and I noticed my wrist was covered with blood. I looked, and realized that his foot was swollen and he was chewing on it. I called the closest avian vet, was told their avian vet was in surgery all afternoon and was referred to another avian vet, whose avian vet was also in surgery all afternoon. The second vet referred me to a 24 hour animal hospital, and their answering machine said that if your pet seems to be in distress to just come in, and I figured J trying to chew his own foot off qualified.
Ever since the first time my car broke down and I took it to a mechanic, it's been filled with mold, not sure what they did, but since I don't have a private garage, I haven't been able to air it out, and I've just been living with it, but I wasn't going to risk J's little birdy lungs in the mold car, so I called a Lyft.
It took about four hours, from the time I called the Lyft until the time I got back home. They weren't sure exactly what caused it, but bandaged his leg and then put a collar on him. When L plucked and I took her to the vet, they put a collar on her too, and she managed to get it off in about a day the first time and two days the second time. This hospital assured me that the way they put the collar on parrots have no hope of getting it off.
It cost me $400, and it'll probably be at least another hundred when they remove the bandages. It would have cost another $300 more if they'd done x-rays, and they'd have had to sedate him, but they didn't think the x-rays were necessary now (the most likely explanation also wouldn't be caught on an x-ray), so I held off on that bit.
Once I got him home, J was completely pitiful. He was absolutely obsessed with getting the collar off (I'd probably be too in his situation), and when I tried putting on a towel on my bed with some pellets and a capful of water, he sort of rolled around on the towel trying to get the collar off until he fell right off onto the floor. This has been the first time I've been grateful to have carpet. Since he was clearly incapable of climbing, perching, or even really walking with his foot bandaged up, I lined a decent-sized cardboard box with towels, put in some pellets and a capful of water, and put the box right under a window so he could get some light.
They gave me some medicines and by the time I gave them to him and covered him up for the night, he'd stopped trying to get his collar off and had just kind of given up, but I'm not sure he ate any food and he'd knocked the water cap over. I'm using a medication cap, because I can't think of anything I have shallow enough for him to reach in his condition that will hold water. But I'm worried I may have to syringe-feed him water until the bandages come off, and maybe hand-feed him pellets as well. He'll eat the pellets from my hand if I'm holding him, but it's also clear that me holding him distresses him, so I'd rather he ate on his own.
Hopefully he makes it out OK with a healed-up leg and this doesn't happen again, but I'm gonna be pretty scared for the next week until his bandages are off, and probably a good while longer. I'm still not entirely over the scare I had with L plucking three years ago.