Our Parrot Stories...

From Jim and A'Lona... at Parrotsnow

It's extremely important to learn about your Pet Birds. We hope to help that with our Parrot Stories.

To start, A'Lona talks about how we got started with Parrots...

Growing up with a father who owned a pet store, I had any pet you could imagine. Fish, turtles, rabbits, monkeys, and more. Even birds. Being young, at that time the birds didn’t excite me, I was more into the monkeys.

Five years ago I came across a bird for sale, the owners needed to sell it due to the fact they had two big dogs, and their barking seemed to stress the bird out. So I purchased the bird with cage for a measly 125.00. Knowing nothing about the bird (or any bird for that matter) I simply fed and watered it daily, and spent time holding it when it would allow. I decided it was a male and named him Peedy. I kept his cage clean and his door open all the time (except at night.) He was free to leave his cage whenever he wanted. When he did leave his cage, he would fly to me and sit on my shoulder. Peedy ended up being a very sweet bird and I grew to love him dearly. Still not knowing what kind of bird he was made it difficult. But, one day while getting food for him, I came across a book with his picture on it! Problem solved! Peddy was a Nanday Conure. Now I knew what he was - but not much else.

About a year after I got Peddy, I found myself doing more reading and research on parrots. Boy, I never knew there was so much to learn, like who knew that birds have their own vet? “Avian vet,” go figure.

I never did take Peddy to see a vet, kept telling myself he was fine and didn’t need one. One night we had company over and of course Peddy was the main attraction, we noticed his beak was bleeding, and thinking he had just hit his beak on something, we let it go. Then on December 23rd 2001 Peddy was not himself, he wasn’t moving and I was able to just pick him up. Jim called a friend who had previously owned a pet store and got a phone number for an avian vet.

While on the phone with the vet we lost Peddy. The vet said from the symptoms we described it sounded like a herpes virus birds can carry. He could have caught it from another bird (to my knowledge Peddy wasn’t with another bird) or could have had it from birth.

Less than a year later, once again Jim was on the phone, this time getting names of pet stores, and directions to them. So off we went looking for another bird, never knowing there were sooooo many different kinds, And baby birds can be very cute. After several pet stores we decided to call our friend who had owned the pet store. She in turn gave us the name and phone number of someone she had dealt with in the past.

We called “Todd” and as if it was meant to be, he happened to have a Double Yellow Headed Amazon he was selling, to the right people anyway. He had hand fed Bubba and was the only owner. But being the owner of seven birds, it was time to down size, so if we were serious about becoming bird owners, we could come meet Bubba. So we did. Now, Todd is a very cautious person and a firm believer that a bird will pick its family, so if he felt Bubba was uncomfortable with us in any way he would not sell him.

On our first visit to meet Todd and Bubba, we were a bit nervous. Bubba was so big, and really seemed to like testing us. Toward the end of our visit, I was holding Bubba and he stretched out his foot and wing. Todd was very surprised and told us that Bubba would only do that if he felt comfortable.

After several weeks of reading books and doing research, which included finding the appropriate cage, the correct food, vitamins, and so forth, we were ready to move forward. Todd was great in helping with all that and more. He gave us feeding times and amounts, bathing tips (which in Bubba’s case was a shower with us,) which vitamins to use, and even a list of words that Bubba already knew. So now we felt we were ready for Bubba, with Todd’s help, and lots and lots of research, we brought Bubba home on November 15th 2001 . Todd said he never understood how anybody could have just one bird so if we ever wanted to add to our family to call him. We laughed and said that Bubba was enough.

In February 2002 once again we were on the phone with Todd, Yes, looking for yet another bird. This time we got a 5-½ week old Sun Conure whom, after several visits, we named Beckett. We hand fed Beckett three times a day for the first few weeks, slowly weaning him. I miss feeding him, but he is now a happy, healthy one year old and has even learned a few words. There are times we consider expanding further but for now two is (almost) more than enough. (Note: In January of 2003, we brought home another Sun Conure, Sonny. This time a 5 year old.)

Please take into consideration when thinking of making a bird part of your family. Don’t buy on a whim. Look around and do research, and when you think you are done, look and research some more. I do believe that Todd was right - the right bird will find you.

--A'Lona (& Jim)

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