Timneh ransom

Muso is feeling a little punky. The past two days I have come home from Cardiology rotation, I have found her on the bottom of the cage. She reacts normally to my voice and is not fluffed. I just think she finds herself on the cage bottom and doesn't know how to get back up on the perch. She has also chewed the rope perch, so it is much thinner and it may not be as comfortable for her to hang onto. She seems OK when I take her out to feed her and will perch normally afterwards, but I am uneasy that she is at the bottom of the cage. I need to make an appointment with the vet now that I have some cash.

They both seem to be eating well. Make loves the birdie bread from Parrot Island, and would pretty much just eat Avi-Cakes if that was all I had. His weight remains around 315 grams and Muso has had a slow, but steady increase since I switched her to the Lafeber hand-feeding formula. Today she was 257!

A little more about how they got here. I was surfing the Hoobly classifieds and saw this ad:

Must Sell!!! Proven Timehe African Grey Breeder Pair

Older breeder Timehe african grey pair. 20 plus years old (open banded) They are partially blind, but throw beautiful babies, and care for them well. When they have babies you must offer soft foods like boild eggs and flax seed, veggies, excetra. as it dose take a toll on them.

I have left the spelling intact. Something possessed me and I called to tell the guy that I would take them. He told me he had them for 5 years and had gotten several chicks out of them. He purchased them from a breeder in central Minnesota for $1500 as they were rare "pink-factor"Timnehs, and their chicks could be sold for more money than the normal Timneh. This breeder had had them for 15 years and the guy didn't know any history beyond that. They were skinny, but the vet in Garrison (?) said that was how older parrots were. When asked if they were fully feathered he said "yes", then paused and said they were a little plucked on their heads. When they had chicks, you needed to feed them a lot of extra soft foods in order for them to keep up with the growing chicks and you needed to rest them a lot between clutches. He only let them have one clutch a year. He hadn't set them up for the last 1.5 years as his life had been busy so he decided to sell them. I arranged to meet him the next day to pick them up.

I got off the phone and wondered "What have I gotten myself into?" I hurried to set up a cage in my bedroom for "partially blind" birds, and booted Bingo's sleeping cage out into the living room. Poor guy. All I could think of was that I couldn't let them fall into the hands of someone who would try to breed them and kill them in the process.

I drove about an hour the next day to meet the guy. The birds were in a cat carrier, with food and water dishes, no perches, and no towel over the cage to keep them warm on a 20 degree day. They were obviously blind, one had a completely bald head and the other was mostly bald on the head. They were both very quiet and a distinct smell was coming from the cage. I recognized the smell immediately - Clostridium diarrhea. He then proudly proclaimed they were on Pretty Bird seed mix and pellets. I talked him down a little on the price, but he stated that even though they were older, for the cheap price he was selling them for, if someone could get even one chick out of them they would be ahead. He was pretty much telling me I was lucky to get them. I gave him the cash, wrapped them in the blanket I had brought and took them to my warm car.

I had "ransomed" them. Not rescued...but ransomed. I was now the proud owner of a geriatric pair of Timneh greys and my emergency cash fund was gone.

Such a sucker...

OK, here's my latest "Act of Stupidity":

This is Mamuso (mom-00-so), a 30-35 year old Timneh Grey Parrot hen.

The other beauty is Make (maw-kay), Mamuso's partner of at least 20 years.

He's probably about the same age as she is. They have had an unknown number of beautiful chicks together over those 20 some years, and now they have their retirement home with me. Sorry the pictures are of such poor quality, I just wanted to take some quick photos to document their first day with me.

Both are completely blind, although Mamuso may see extreme contrast shadow in her right eye. I "ransomed" them on Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009 as I didn't have enough stress with my upcoming Small Animal Medicine rotation.

I will tell more of their story soon.

Off to Cambridge

I just found out today that my 6-week externship at MIT in Cambridge, MA is an official go!!  I sent in the application quite a while ago and hadn't heard anything, so I sent them an email yesterday.  This morning there were 2 cheery little emails in my inbox saying that I had gotten in!

I haven't been to Boston or the area so I'm a little nervous.  But it should be a great experience over the summer and I get paid!  Not many externships pay.  Now I have to get my housing and transportation taken care of. Woo Hoo!!

What are you covered with?

I'm sitting here looking at my 17 year-old dog who has bird poop in her fur.  I swear the parrots do it on purpose.  When she was younger and more aware of her surroundings, this never happened.  I'm guessing she kept a closer eye on the parrots and I also didn't have Solveig the Timneh Grey.  Sweet, smart, beautiful, mischievous, Solveig.  So I feel like I am walking around with bird poop on me; but instead of poop I am covered in vet school but I just don't know it.

Classes are quite light for me right now. Only 19 credits and most days I am done by noon.  I know when April comes and rotations start it will be a different story, so I tell myself that I should enjoy this down time.  A classmate called it "the calm before the storm."  I worry that when the day comes when I take a look at my back in the mirror and see 3 years of vet school smeared all over it, I won't be prepared.  Will I be able to wash it off? Will it stain? 

In the beginning...

"I want to be a veterinarian!"  How many little girls say that?  I know I have since I was about 5 years old.  In 7th grade, we had a class project to put together a "Book of Me", basically our dreams of the future. Yes, I wanted to be a veterinarian who owned her private practice. 

Ah, the ignorant bliss of youth...

After getting my undergraduate degree in Biology (what does that even mean?), I fumbled around for a few years and lost the nerve to even attempt filling out the application to vet school.  Funny that most of my jobs dealt with the animal field, but now I was too old, too stupid, too squeamish, and/or too inexperienced to even try getting into vet school.  Well, the year 2000 was the worst of my life, and I was jolted into the reality that if I didn't at least TRY to apply, TRY to get into vet school, I would always regret it.  Good old apocalyptic Y2K taught me that regret isn't a good way to live and that I had spent most of my life in a "What if ??" and "If only I had..." mode. Hmmm, hadn't worked out very well...

So I quit the boring job I was at (lovely people, though), found a job at a local veterinary clinic, and started working on the prerequisite classes so I could apply.  I had most of the science and liberal arts requirements already taken, but I retook some to get better grades and others I had never had (organic chem, biochem, physics).  After 4 years of working full-time and being at least a half-time undergraduate student, I applied and got in!  First try!  Ego boost!

I'm thinking there will be other posts that tell of some of the tales during those 4 pre-vet school years, and also about how and why I didn't do so well my first year. Interesting little tidbits of my life, for sure.  For now I am planning on logging my adventures during my Senior Clinical rotations, which are in the process of being scheduled right now.  I'm sure there will also be wondrous tales of studying for and hopefully passing the national board exam in December '09.

Here's to May 2010!!