(Honey is the "adventure bird" on the left)
Honey was the sister in a brother-and-sister pair that I was
visiting
at a local pet store.
I took them under my wing because they were from my friend's flock -
although,
since then, I have done regular visiting with other peoples' lovebirds
at local pet
stores.
I would go down there pretty much every other day, sometimes more
often. I'd let
them out of their cage and they'd run around on me, preen me and have
fun.
It didn't take long for one of the pair to start showing that she was
a she. I didn't
have any nipping problems with her, but whenever she would meet a new
person she
would jump on them, snuggle-in somewhere on their body, and then start
getting
defensive of her territory - A henly thing to do. I named her
Honey.
I was getting very attached to the two of them - A short time later, a
family bought Honey's
brother, leaving Honey
by herself.
I visited Honey for a few more days after she had been left
alone. She would wait
for me to come in and be very upset and unhappy when I had to
leave. It was
obvious, she had to come home with me :-) That was February
of
2007.
Once she got home, I tried to introduce her to some of the eligible
males - Pinky
and Graybie -yeah right. They have no clue when it comes to females.
I was hoping that she would like Quazi, our little yellow rescue boy,
but she fell for
Scooter instead. There are a lot of times when I don't like
Scooter. He can be
a total dick.
During "out time", she would court him, getting small and "square
headed".
She'd say her sweet little cockatiel TooWEEoo to him. He finally
got interested
and they even mated a few times. Every night at out time, she'd
run around, and
do her thing for a while. When I would walk by, she'd call out to
me, run to the
edge of the cage closest to me and bob her head with that expectant
"UP! UP!" look.
If I didn't come and get her right away, she would sometimes throw
herself into
the air, even though she couldn't fly, and I'd scramble to catch
her. Other times,
I would be in the other room and she couldn't wait so I find her
Twee-ing and
walking out to find me.
After some snuggling, she would end up in the sleeve of my
sweatshirt. Either down
near my armpit or up just inside the cuff. She'd pop her head
out, all fluffy and happy
and I'd rub on her face with my nose. Sometimes I'd reach in with
my pinkie finger
and gently rub the back of her head and cheek. She'd turn her
head around, guiding
my finger to where she wanted to be rubbed. She loved it and I loved
being able to
give her such bliss.
We spent hours together every night before bed. The only down
side was that I
couldn't use my left hand for everything that I normally would for fear
of hurting
her by accident.
She started spending large parts of her days in with Scooter and
Quazi. She really
only wanted Scooter, but Quazi (Scooter's room mate) kept trying to
feed her and
get on her good side. There would usually be a lot of "chitting"
coming from Scooter.
All frustration. He's a player and tries to get it on with
everyone who might let
him - no matter how bad the consequences.
They started mating more often at the end of June and she started
rehearsing
making nests in carboard boxes. She had a couple of huge fights
with Dorie,
the hen, over Scooter. They both came out ok because I broke them
up right away.
One day, Sunday 7/14/07, I noticed that she was staying fluffy even
when she and
Scooter weren't playing around. She was wanting me to take her
out of the boy's
cage. I did and she was overfluffed and sleepy. One of the
worst warning signs
a bird can give. I took her, held her and tried warming her with my
breath. I gave
her some E-Mycin in her water (the only thing I had) and I set up the
hot box for
her but she wouldn't stay in it. I kept her in my sleeve until I
set up an electric
blanket over her cage as a way of keeping her warm. The next day,
she wasn't
any better and I brought her down to Greywolf Vet's Emergency
Room. They
took her, gave her Baytril and fluids, and kept her in their
incubator. When I
picked her up, they thought that she had Megabacteria. They had
me put her
on Baytril and Amphotericin-B orally. That was bad - there was
almost no way
to get it down her. I took her back so Dr Tavares could show me how to
tube
feed her. She got another Baytril inj and a small tube feeding. Later
that day she
seemed great! I was thankful that she would be able to get well
again.
The next day wasn't nearly as good. And the day after that. She
seemed to be
slowly losing ground. She was now spending most of her time under
a heat lamp
to stay warm. I still carried her around in my hands or in my
sleeve, but she
would often want the much hotter light in her cage. She was
having to endure tube
feeding twice a day.
Over a week went by and on Tuesday morning she was still not doing well.
The sun was bright and warm so I took her outside to see if it might
help
her. I tube
fed her, held her, and ran some errands. When we got back, she
was on the cage
floor. I could see that she was very weak. After a short
while I knew that she was
failing fast. I called and rushed her to Greywolf again.
This time Dr Bewig gave her
fluids. I was thankful that she was there at 9PM. Honey was
in bad shape, but she
actually wanted to eat. I heated up some babyfood and she ate a
little. Then came
a watery poop that lost at least as much fluid as was injected a hour
earlier. :-(
I put her in her cage under her light. She was teetering on her
perch so I moved the
light and her down to the cage floor and continued to talk to her and
watch her.
She wanted to be under the heatlamp, then would stumble away from
it. Then go
back. She finally came to me and kept weakly burrowing to get to
my sleeve. Once
she went in she immediately calmed down. At around midnight, she
crept up my
sleeve and reached her head out. I kissed her beak and rubbed her
cheeks and the back
of her head while she drifted in and out of consciousness. She
was so weak - but I
think that she was moving her head to where she wanted me to rub.
Two long hours later and she was dead.
She died at 1:50AM Wednesday morning (7/25/07).
I can't think about her without crying. I feel like I never will.
I'm heartbroken. She would spend almost every evening sleeping in
my sleeve.
In the end, she made it very clear that that's where she wanted to be
at the end.
On Wednesday, we drove her 2.5 hours away to the Washington State
University
Avian
Research facility to have them do a necropsy. I hated to hand her
over to
them but I knew that the Honey-baby that I loved was gone. She
would want to
know
what killed her.
I had a suspicion that the megabac wasn't what killed her. The
meds just never
really took hold.
I would love to see a day when avian medicine is at least as refined as
human
medicine. It seems so hit-or-miss, but then, so is a lot of
medicine :-(
I miss my sweet little Honey. I miss her happy crunching in my
sleeve as she
dropped off to sleep. I miss how happy her face would get when
she'd hop
onto my hand and run down my sleeve. I miss that warm little body
snuggled up
against my arm.
Even though she was only with the flock for less than five months, I
really fell in
love with her. I'd walk around with her head sticking out of my
sleeve and I'd
hold her up to my nose and say, in a Scottish accent "What aboot tha
bayybeee??"
and she'd watch me with her dark eyes and fluffily smile...
8/6/07 - We've spent the
last ten days
worrying about whether Honey died from
something contagious and whether
or not the rest of the flock would die from it as
well. Today I got the call that Honey died
from a cancerous tumor in
her "bursa" -
the organ in birds that creates their blood cells. That would
explain her being anemic.
I
can't
say how relieved I am! I still wish I had known so I
wouldn't have forced
the medicine on her and just kept her comfortable for her last days...
Life Goes On -
10/3/2007 - I still think
about Honey a lot. Especially at night when she would have
been riding around in my sleeve. The male youngsters
(SquareTail, PointyTail and
BlueBoy) are keeping me pretty busy. We just found
out that two of the hens,
Dorie and Rosey, who live next to each other, figured out how to
hide their new
eggs from me. I noticed that they were both spending way too much
time in their
nests to be sitting on old infertile eggs (they give up after a
while). So when they
were away from their nests, cutting "twigs" out of paper to carry back
to their
nests, I snuck over and started digging around in their
nests. They had both
buried their new eggs in the back of the nest, under a layer of nesting
material!
They did that, while leaving the marked "dud" eggs up at the front
where I could
see them! They are very tricky! I took the new eggs
out and held them up to the
light. Four out of six eggs were completely dark - that meant
that they had developed
to the point where there was a chick, almost ready to hatch.
I didn't handle it well. I was already starting to try to find
new homes for Violet,
a rescue hen, and the three boys. It is really hard to screen
people to find the
best people to take my babies. I wasn't going to do
anything bad to the eggs that
were this far along, but I didn't really like the idea of raising
another four chicks.
We came up with an idea to put the eggs in the hands of fate. We
put the four
eggs in Lulu & Boodah's nest. They have never been able to
have kids, so if
the eggs hatch, they can get their wish. If the eggs didn't hatch
with her, then
that's the Fate part... As I put the eggs in Lulu's nest, I
remembered what was
told to me a week or so before - "If Honey was as attached to you as
you are to
her, maybe she'll be born back into The Flock". I thought, "that
would be great"
but didn't think about the idea much after that.
10/11/2007 - Of course, the chicks started hatching. Soon all
four were out of
their eggs and being fed by Lulu and Boodah. They did a great
job, but I could
see that it made Boodah kind of stressed-out.
Because of "The Boys" that I was interacting with, the new chicks
got almost
no handling to get them used to people. Lulu was being the
over-protective
hen that is built into most mommy-birds. After a while, the
chicks started looking around
and would end up peering out of the front of the nest box. They
would look around,
taste the edge of the hole in the front of the box, maybe even reach
out and try
playing with things right outside the hole in the nest box.
That would go fine until I, or another lovebird pair, would show up
near the front
of Lulu's cage. When she would see someone other than Boodah
coming, she
would chase the chicks to the back of the nest box.
Someone different -
It didn't take long for me to notice that one of the chicks, after
being chased
to the back by Lulu, would turn around, come back to the front, and
stare at
me.
Later, when the chicks started to explore outside of their nest
box, I would come over to them and they
would run back into the nest box - just like Lulu taught them
-- Except one chick.
That chick wouldn't run back into the box, but wanted to come over to
the door of the cage. In a very short
time, that one chick would stand near the door and let me pick her up!
This, while the other three chicks would
be piled into a back corner of the nest box!
That little chick would come out and fall asleep in my hand while the
others hid in the safety of their nest.
I thought "Maybe this is Honey..." - I decided to call her
HoneyPie, just in case.
After another week or so, I started to see HoneyPie having some of the
same mannerisms that Honey
had. I thought that I would try something with her - I held my
sleeve open to see what she would
do. After being a little unsure, she crept into my open sleeve
and took up her favorite spot!
She was happy as could be! And so was I!
As HoneyPie has gotten older, more of her Honey mannerisms has
shown up - all mixed in with being born
into a very different world than Honey was. It didn't take long
before her siblings noticed that she was
different as well. They started trying to run HoneyPie out of her
cage long before Lulu and Boodah would
pressure the other chicks to leave.
One night time during "out time", HoneyPie's brother, BlueTail,
wasn't paying attention and someone came up
from underneath him and bit his foot. He yelled, flew
and crash-landed on the floor. He was
bleeding so I picked him up and held him, trying to calm him
down. Without thinking, I called out
"Honey! Come talk to your brother!" HoneyPie
litterally ran across the cage tops, jumped onto
my hand and started preening BlueTail's head and touching his beak to
calm him down.
That was when I was sure that she's really Honey.
I promised myself that if HoneyPie really did seem to be Honey
reincarnated, that she would get special
treatment. To this day, after riding around in my
sleeve, she gets to sleep in the bedroom, wrapped up
in her favorite things. Sometimes I take my
sweatshirt off with her in the sleeve so she can sleep
in it overnight.
Ok, so she's spoiled, but every day she gets more and more playfull and
jolly. Unlike her siblings, she's
much more of a clown and a little bit of a klutz. Her
brothers and sisters are still pretty nervous around
people, especially when I try getting them on my hands.
Honey, or HoneyPie, waits for me at night
and does her bobbing "Up! Up!" dance when I come near - just like
old times.
I walk up to her, pull my sleeve open, and she zooms in.
It's so wonderful having her home again!
2/22/2008