Saturday, June 11, 2011

Accidents happen so quickly

It's been a very long week for me - deadlines, unnecessary stress and just sheer bad luck.

As the week progressed, by the time Thursday came I was exhausted. Finally things started to look up a bit on Friday; still a busy day but things seem to finally start to turn around.

Yeah right.

I came home in a happier state but still very tired. The birds seem to understand - the typical trouble makers (Zuri and Pixel) were really well behaved, Petey had given me some his "Hi Petey"s even though the Boy wasn't there and that typically makes him silent and had behaved really well and didn't try to dive-bomb attack me once. Shade and Piper snuggled extra close and Joey was standing in a protective fashion in front of me, on the computer desk.

I actually would have called this blog something along the lines about how they seem to perceive your mood...but then came diner time.

Wanting to get them in their cages quickly so I could feed them and then go lay down, I made a mistake. I brought Petey and Zuri in the room at the same time, both on a different perch which I was holding in different hands to keep them distanced. Normally, when I bring Petey in like this he behaves until I put him down in his cage where he might decide to turn around and "attack" the perch. Yesterday, he became antsy and when the birdroom dawned closer, he flew in and landed on one of the hanging gyms. This is normally what Zuri does and the moment Petey took off, he took off after him. And I then had a ball of two Meyer's stuck together. I managed to separate them really quickly, how I did so I don't quite remember. Put both of them in their respective cages and then went to inspect each of them for any potential injuries. Petey seemed fine, only in a huff. Zuri was holding a foot up. Upon closer inspection, there was a little blood. I rushed out and prepared a thick clay mixture with water and Clay-cal to put on his foot. That proved to be rather difficult as he wouldn't let me handle him so I ended up smearing some on his rock perch and having him perch on it and it seem to do the work. From what I could gather, there wasn't a deep cut, maybe just a little bit of the skin had been pulled away. During the evening I frequently checked up on him and he seemed to leave his foot for the most part alone, although, as expected, he wasn't putting a lot of weight on it. Of course all of this had to happen on a Friday night..

This morning I got up really early to check on him, fearful that he would have decided to play with it overnight and there being blood all over the cage. Instead, I found a cheerful bird perched on both feet just waiting to be left out. I did take him out a bit, just him and I, and then put him back in so I could get a bit more sleep, feeling better about him. And when I let them out for their morning out-of-cage time, he wasn't as active as he normally is, but was still moving around quite a bit and was perching on both feet and also put all his weight on his injured foot when he was preening the other.

Hopefully he'll just keep getting better, I tried looking at his feet again and the bottom toe that seem to have been the problem only seem to have a little dry blood on it, the top had a little bit of skin lifted which I think went down to side of the toe. So mostly a scratch and not a bite as him and Petey might have locked together feet-to-feet.



A picture of Zuri from this morning. He's looking really alert, like his usual self. You can see a bit of the dried blood on his left foot (our right).

I had been looking forward to the week-end all week this week. When I got up the second time today, I thought things were be looking up until I found out that the cat had just thrown up in the living room...

1 comment:

Laura's Bird World said...

Scary. Glad to hear that Zuri seems to be ok.