Um, hi.
It’s been almost a year since I posted here. I’ve decided to start again.
Echo and Fox are doing great. Echo is more or less back to the happy, people-friendly bird he was when I first got him. Fox is more anxious and a little cage-bound. However, he’ll happily fly out of the cage on his own (usually following Echo) and will interact with people without an issue outside of the cage.
We’ve since added a pitbull puppy, Rhea, to our home and after the initial “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING?!?!” reaction, the birds adjusted well. They only come out when Rhea’s around under SERIOUS SUPERVISION but so far, so good.
Echo’s third birthday is…well, in mere minutes, as I type this.
How about some pictures?
- When Fox doesn’t understand something, he screams at it until it makes sense to him.
- This includes ferrets.
I moved the birds out of my room and into the living room, now that it’s warm enough. You can imagine how Fox is handling this.
Vet visit? Check.
Healthy birds? Double check. =D
Tomorrow, I take the birds to the vet. It’s Fox’s first appointment ever, and Echo’s second (I’m a few months behind on his yearly visit, shhh).
I feel certain that Echo will put the “cock” in “cockatiel.”
Last night, though, the poor birds had a night fright. I wasn’t in the room, but I heard one of them screaming, so I hurried into my bedroom. Sure enough, they were flapping and flopping around like their lives depended on it. I turned on the light and uncovered them and they STILL wouldn’t calm down. Night-frights like these happen from time to time…usually it’s just Fox, though, what with Echo being cool as a cucumber 95% of the time. The weirdest part was that Echo wasn’t flying. He was just as flightless as Fox at the bottom of the cage. As he climbed onto the side of the cage, I saw that his wings were SHORT, like he’d been clipped. And then I saw about a dozen flight feathers all over the floor. He’d managed to knock out every last one of them in his frenzy. He was more scared and traumatized than I’ve ever seen him. I stuck my finger through the bars, and just like he used to pre-Fox, he perched there, petrified. He was suddenly my sweet baby again. I talked softly to them and tried to see if either one of them was hurt…especially Echo, with all his missing feathers. If he’d hit a blood feather, he could bleed to death. I saw no blood, though, and after a few minutes Echo remembered that he hated me and retreated to a perch. His wing feathers were still really ruffled and I watched him for awhile to see if he was in any pain. (He lost two more flight feathers while preening.)
There’s been no blood but I’m happy the vet visit is tomorrow…I want to make sure his wings are all right.
embraceyourname:
This cockatiel, to be specific:
I hope I hope I hope!!
I posted this in January, just as I made a split decision to get another cockatiel.
Came across this in my archives, and felt nostalgic. It’s only been a month and a half, but Fox fits in so well. And even though Echo is still MONSTROUS, they’re little buddies, and it makes me so happy to see.
I haven’t been asked this, exactly, but I know I’d be thinking it if this situation was someone else’s. Echo is SUCH a nightmare…so why not separate him from Fox?
- Echo is ridiculously happy. Hating us, yes, but he adores Fox and, being alone a lot of the time, it’s important to me that he’s not lonely.
- Fox has made SUCH a positive change. During quarantine, he hardly moved. He was constantly anxious and alert, rarely relaxing. He’d sleep on the bottom of his cage, underneath his food dish, where he felt safe. He didn’t play with toys. He was touch-and-go on stepping onto my hand—sometimes he was okay with it, sometimes it terrified him. I suspected that his anxiety stemmed from suddenly being the only bird around, and I was right…immediately upon meeting Echo, he relaxed. The second I put him in Echo’s cage, he started exploring, playing with toys, relaxing. He’ll almost always step up and come out of the cage now. He never goes to the bottom of the cage. It’s a 180 degree difference for the better.
So I don’t want to resort to separating them. I also don’t want to completely lose my bond with Echo, so separating them isn’t completely out of the question. I’m just going to wait and see.
