| A thank-you and one final litle story - CLICK HERE for the Pet Manual Forum Home Page |
| Scott Petrie |
I would like to thank all who wrote back offering there sympathies. It
really meant a lot to Laura and me.
I have one more little story I'd like to share with you about Cheap.
Our first visit to the vet was about the moment I decided that we had
something special in this little guy.
I had taken him by myself as Laura was unable to be there. In the waiting
room Cheap was his usual self screaming at passers by sitting on my shoulder
having one of our standard rubbish conversations. It just happened that on
that day another love bird was in for something and happened to be sitting
with her keepers beside us. Cheap was about 3/4 the size of the other bird,
and when the other people raised there bird up for the 2 birds to see each
other, Cheap let out one of his little growly grunts followed by his
trademark ear piercing "cheep" (It really was impressive, that sound he
belted out. If Cheap happened to be on your shoulder when he let loose the
sound would echo in your head, you'd have virtually no hearing in the ear
closest to the little guy for about 20 seconds and your ears would ring for
minutes afterwards) the opposing bird leapt back to the far wall of her
cage. Cheap, seemingly satisfied with his work, moved to my other shoulder
away from the other lovebird and continued watching the world out the
window.
The examination was for the most part went well. No evidence of infection,
feathers look good and so on and so on. Then the doctor weighed the little
guy....40 grams....."Hmm he should weigh almost 50 grams. He is tiny though
even for a lovebird"
This is about the time that Cheap decided he was finished with the
examination. Out of the doctors hands and up on the shoulder...doctor calmly
reaches up lifts Cheap and returns him to finger perch.......Cheap proceeds
to try and run up the doctors arm, that hand in the way isn't going to stop
Cheap. Up and over and up to the doctors shoulder. Again the doctor picks
the little guy up and returns him to his hand. again Cheap runs up the
doctors arm towards his shoulder and again the doctor try's to stop him with
his other hand. Cheap try's a different tactic....growly grunt chomp! "Ow I
think he actually drew blood" he also managed to get up to the doctors
shoulder and blasted the doc's right ear with one of his blessed notes. The
doctor actually winced. It was brilliant.
Now the absurdity of this situation is as follows. This doctor has come
highly recommended as being able to handle all sorts of unmanageable birds.
He's one of the "towel free" doctors that I've read about. He, however, had
never met Cheap.
The doctor was describing to me the intricacies of the bird hierarchy and
attempting to demonstrate all of these show him whose boss techniques for
keeping him on your hand. For every trick the Doctor had Cheap had three
tricks to get past it. Each time he got past the doctors defences and up
onto his shoulder he would announce his victory with a "cheep" After about 5
minutes of this the doctor turned to Cheap and said "You're good" He then
once more picked up Cheap and placed him on his hand and bent over at the
waist. While doing this the doctor started saying something like "If you
hang your arm and bend over at the waist that the bird can't" that was all
he got out before Cheap was up onto the docs' shoulder again with a
triumphant "cheep"
For some reason at this point the doctor started to talk about the need for
blood work and said that he would take the little guy down stairs for this.
He then asked the assistance of 2 of his technicians for the proceedings.
This struck me as odd. TooKay our lory is a significantly larger bird and
only required the assistance of one other, when blood was being taken. As
well, the doctor performed the blood extraction right in front of us when he
worked on TooKay. Cheaps small size may have meant that the procedure simply
required much more finesse than could be mustered without the assistance of
2 technicians and some far away equipment. I'd rather like to think that the
Doctor had met his match in our little lovebird, and that he required
back-up and the solace of his lab to save him from further humiliation.
Anyway I laughed hard almost the entire way home from the vet clinic. It's a
shame I won't get to enjoy anymore regular checkups.
Regards,
Scott
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