I can't believe that in about three months I will have a baby. I woke up this morning with that thought in my head. It doesn't seem real. After all of the failed pregnancies, I have just gotten used to the idea of being able to successfully keep one alive inside me. Now in three months I have to figure out how to get it out? And what to do with it once it is out?
Griffin and I have lots of plans, theories and intentions, but the actual day-to-day stuff mystifies me. It is not that I will be responsible for another life, that concept I am used to, after all, I have pets. Maybe it is the idea that I, we, will be focusing our lives on this new 'pet'. I am assuming everything that I am now doing with either change, minimize or disappear altogether, but to actually have it happen is another thing.
The last two days were a bit freaky. On Friday, our second snow day in a row, I got ready to take a shower. I got Eleu, our green wing macaw (pronounced Eee-loo), out of his cage and let him stand on one of the fixtures in the shower. Yes, I shower with my parrot. (It's like showering with a friend, but never having to worry about dropping the soap.) The water was running and I got in.
Eleu was chatting and fluffing as he usually does in the shower. He likes to ruffle his feathers in the steam. I washed my face as he continued babbling away. He makes noises in the shower that he doesn't make anywhere else. We have had Eleu almost seven years now; raised him since he was 8 weeks old, I hand fed him for the first five months, and I am very attached to him. I put Eleu on the floor of the shower so he could run around.
When Eleu is on the shower floor, I don't do anything else. I focus all of my attention on him, I wouldn't want to be washing my hair and accidentally step on him. Eleu crouched on the floor as he usually does and I bounced the water off my hands to give him a soft spray. The light in the bathroom can be a little weird and can play tricks on your eyes, so as I was looking down at the water flowing into the drain, thought it was curious that it looked sort of pink. At first I thought it was just the light, but as I looked more closely I could see that it was blood mixed in the water.
My first thought was that I was bleeding. My heart began to pound. I have not had any bleeding with this pregnancy, but bled many times with the last ones and sometimes in the shower. I watched the water for a moment and realized the blood was flowing from where Eleu was standing. This wasn't a much better situation.
"Oh, you are bleeding, baby," I said to the bird as a I picked him up and put him back on the fixture on the wall. He babbled happily. I couldn't see any particular location that the blood was coming from. I noticed a dried clot on top of his tail; it looked as if the tip of his wing had been dripping blood onto it a while earlier. I picked off the little clot.
I then noticed that the water dripping off him from the soft spray was tinged red. It was dripping off the end of one flight feather. Blood mixed with water. I picked him up and opened his wing. I looked underneath, nothing. I checked his back, nothing. Where was the blood coming from?
When a bird has a new feather come in, the feather has a blood supply until it is fully grown. The blood is in the shaft of the feather and it dries up when it is no longer needed. If the feather is bent or broken while the blood is still in the shaft, it will bleed. A bird can actually bleed to death from a broken blood feather. In a parrot Eleu's size, the shafts of his bigger feathers are the size of a drinking straw. Imagine your blood pouring out of you through that? It wouldn't take long before the bird would die. Most of the time, the bird will clot before he bleeds to death. My fear was that he had broken a blood feather earlier in the day and I just washed the clot out.
I finished showering in about three minutes, shaking the whole time. I put Eleu on the bathroom floor while I got dressed. He played with the rug and babbled gleefully. This did not sound like a bird dying. I looked him over again and still could not find the source of the blood. No feathers were broken and I couldn't find any sort of a wound. I brought him back to his cage and changed his papers. I wanted to be able to see if there was more blood dripping off of him.
Griffin had be having a rough day at work. He works from home and I had learned early on in our relationship to leave him alone when he is in the middle of something. During my whole 'blood crisis' Griffin was in his office having his own crisis. Apparently, computers can be just as much of a help as a hindrance to him as they are to me, so I did not tell him what was going on, just yet. I continued to run around by myself panicking.
I checked on Eleu as he was drip-drying in his cage. I did not see any blood on the fresh papers at the bottom. Maybe it was something old that just needed to be washed off? Eleu was playing with one of his toys, having a good time. He did not seem to be in distress. I started to calm down.
Griffin finally emerged from his office and announced that it was time for pizza. I love pizza night, but I wasn't especially hungry. I told him briefly what was going on with Eleu as we headed out. When we got back, less than an hour later, I headed straight into Eleu's room (our big sun room). Eleu was playing and there was no blood on the paper. Good. He was fine. This was over.
The next morning when I got Eleu up, he was bright and happy. I changed his water and gave him fresh fruit and cheese. When I was putting the bowls back in his cage I noticed that his back was really nappy looking. His feathers were clumped and chewed on. Eleu is not a feather picker - he is a happy, well adjusted bird. It is rare that I ever find a single feather chewed on, and never a whole clump of them.
I took him out of the cage and looked him over while he ran around on the outside of his cage. I lifted his wing and parted the feathers on his back. I didn't see any blood or wounds. I let him run back into his cage and eat his breakfast.
Not long after, I was sitting on the couch in our library when I heard a very weird noise. I thought it was Griffin in the basement moving something around. It sounded like furniture being dragged across the floor. I paused with what I was doing to listen. Suddenly, I realized that it was Eleu squawking in a way I had never heard before. I dashed into his room - heart pounding.
Eleu was standing on his top perch just looking at me. I went over to him and asked him what was wrong. He said, "Apple . . . grape!" I took him out of his cage to inspect him again. He is fairly patient with me and let me dig around through his feathers on his back and under his wing. I found that his chewing had gone all the way into his downy feathers on his back. The feathers were kind of crusty and gross looking. Eleu is not a fat bird, he weighs just over two pounds - the lighter end of the scale for greenwings (they range from two to almost four pounds) and I could see right to the bones under his skin on his back there were so many feathers missing. I still couldn't find a wound.
I found Griffin and told him we need to take Eleu to the vet. I called Eleu's vet and they squeezed us in for an appointment an hour later. We are very lucky to have an avian vet nearby, he is in Chester, just 35 minutes away. I dug around in the basement and found Eleu's carrier. It is just a plastic dog crate that I installed a perch into, but the carrier is huge: Almost three feet long, and 18" high and wide. It needs to be big to accommodate Eleu's long tail - head to tail he is almost three feet long.
When we were ready to go I got Eleu packed into the crate. He is a good bird and got it without much fuss. Griffin carried the crate into the garage and proceeded to awkwardly stuff the carrier into my Mini Cooper. This is a tight fit, very tight, but it fits as long as you have the front seats moved forward to an uncomfortable position. Griffin's car is a Ford Ranger, no back seat, only room for two people, so the Mini was the only choice. We set off for the vet.
Eleu climbed around in his crate and didn't make much noise. He said 'hello' one time and spent most of the trip looking out of the window through his crate. All of the things that could be wrong with him were running through my head. I love my bird and the thought of a wound that won't heal or something even worse made me feel sick. Griffin was driving; I tried to calm down.
The vet took us in right away. He was very nice. I had taken Eleu to him a year and a half ago for a check-up and was happy with how gentle they were with him. I held Eleu on my hand while the doctor checked his back and wing. Eleu was not thrilled, but I was able to keep his beak pointed away from the vet and his tech and he focused on me instead. They then put him into a towel to check his heart and inspect his underside. The only times he has been wrapped in a towel has been at the vet. He doesn't like it and spends every second chewing large holes into the terrycloth. He didn't scream or try to flap and I rubbed his head and talked to him while they worked on him.
The vet couldn't find anything wrong with him. Yes, he has been chewing on his feathers in one spot, but there is no wound there, no tumor, nothing wrong. The doctor started talking about giving Eleu Benadryl to stop him from chewing his feathers. I was still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that there was nothing wrong. The vet explained that sometimes a bird gets hurt or twists a muscle and they start to chew in that area because they can't figure out what is bothering them. The chewed area becomes itchy and that is where the Benadryl comes in.
The vet explained that it may take a while for Eleu to stop chewing altogether and to administer the Benadry twice a day. It comes in a liquid form, so I would have to suck it into a plastic syringe and squirt it into his lower mandible. I used to hand feed Eleu in almost the same way and he loved it, how hard could it be?
Before we left the vet chatted with us about Eleu. He weighed him and checked his eyes and took a dropping sample. The doctor gave us the best compliment, too. He said that Eleu was the nicest macaw he had ever seen. He was well behaved and gentle and that I must be raising him right. The tech agreed. He said that the way I handled him was great and most people who bring in their macaws just hand them over to the tech and say "good luck!". He told me to keep doing whatever I am doing, because I am raising a nice, healthy parrot. It was good to hear.
I started to feel better and we packed up and went home. Back in the sun room, I got the syringe and the Benadry and prepared to give Eleu his first dose. I put him on my knee, held his upper mandible and attempted to squirt the Benadry into his mouth. I got a little bit in his mouth and he managed to turn his head, so the rest went on my pants. Okay, so I needed a firmer grip. I refilled and got it all into his beak. The lower mandible is like a cup, it is easy to pour something into the cup, unfortunately, it is just as easy to pour something out of it. That is exactly what he did. He tiled his he down and most of it dribbled out.
It is some pretty sticky stuff so I wiped up a bit with a tissue and made one more attempt. I think I got a bit more into him. It took about 8 ml to get about 4ml into him. I handed Eleu the tissue and he grabbed it and wiped his beak, chewed on it for a moment and dropped it. That trick is a leftover from the old hand feeding days - parrots don't like to have messy beaks and will clean up if you give them a napkin.
Eleu seemed fine the rest of the day. I tried to watch and see if he was chewing and didn't see him doing it. Maybe the Benadry was working? When it came time for his evening dose, things got a little trickier. During the winter I don't cut Eleu's flight feathers and he gets the chance to fly around a bit. Usually it is just from the love seat to his cage or from my knee to his cage.
When I put him down on my knee to give him the Benadry, he flapped and as I leaned back away from his huge wings he flew off my knee. He flew around the room and landed on my plant rack. He managed to knock one of my plant terrariums onto the floor and it smashed. Eleu - 1, Benadry - 0.
Griffin jumped off the love seat and started cleaning up the mess. I grabbed the bird and made another attempt. I put him back on my knee and tried to hold him and get the medicine in his mouth. He held still for me. As I squirted, he put his tongue on the syringe and it sprayed everywhere but in his mouth. He then flew away. This time he headed for his cage, in the process he managed to knock a glass bowl that Griffin had used for ice cream onto the floor. It smashed. I went over and started picking up the mess. Griffin was still working on the smashed terrarium. Eleu - 2, Benadryl - 0.
When we had both messes cleaned up. I asked Griffin for help. Somehow, the two of us managed to get most of the dose into his mouth. It wasn't easy. The vet said we may have to do this for weeks or months. There had to be a better way. I put Eleu back on his cage and he climbed inside and eyed us for a while. He wasn't trilled at being man-handled that way. I wasn't thrilled about having to do it.
We went to bed shortly after and I laid awake for a long time thinking about how to get the Benadry into Eleu without all the drama. I decided that we would need to experiment with adding it to food. His favorite food, cheese, was not really an option. I couldn't imagine having to wrestle with him at six in the morning before work everyday. Perhaps applesauce would work? We would need to buy some applesauce.
I learned a few things over the last couple of days: the thought of my baby being in pain, injured or sick makes me ill almost instantly and I need to toughen up, some jobs will require an extra pair of hands to avoid having many things smashed in the process, and that my Mini Cooper is not the 'family' car I once thought it could be - I think we will need a bigger vehicle.
PS
I found this article this morning, a little too late, about how to give a bird liquid medicine. It is very, very accurate:
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