I knew that coming home would be a huge adjustment for her but i was not prepared nor could i have been. the drama! i read that it was good to start them on a harness young, so i bought her an aviator to try and see if she would like it. And she loved it!! She even wanted to wear it a second time the next day... but the moment we stepped outside the apartment an ill-placed shard sliced through my ankle and my achilles. so i was bleeding and screaming and hobbling back upstairs with a terrified brand new bird on my shoulder. i got her back into her cage, passed out, woke up, then called an ambulance.
So, a week into her new life when she should be the center of attention, she is suddenly getting much much less. I was home all day and did nothing but attend to her, but i also spent a lot of time moaning and immobile and she was smart enough to know something was wrong and did not know me well enough to trust me. i live alone. it was not the best welcome home for her. a few weeks later i was in a walking cast and we had bonded well but i saw signs of behavioral issues developing and/or possible health problems.
looking for a cause of her behavior...and then my concern that she wasn't eating enough... led to the second bombshell. so when i bought her i told the store she was my first bird, that i was inexperienced, and that i absolutely did not have the skills to take home an unweaned bird. i asked about this twice and was assured both times. guess what? after several trips to the vet and tests and a ton of money the official diagnosis of her diffuse problems was "not properly weaned". i had to teach her to eat it seemed, got her eating on a schedule and staying at a solid 110g which the vet said was healthy weight for her size. poor girl. or boy.
i am sure it was the stress of that moving experience that made her eat less... certainly people express stress through food. but i wish i knew to recognize this earlier. i was seriously wracking my brain trying to figure out what could be going on.
i won't bitch too much about the store...ok i will. they had assured me she was weaned so i did not suspect it nor do i have the skills to detect it or manage it. then they said they were feeding her with a bottle in the mornings when i went back and asked. and to top it off the papers i got with her don't match the band on her foot and they could not explain that nor did they care. they treated me like a crazy person for insisting on the birthdate and vaccination records for my bird. the crazy person that just spent 850 in their store. i think they could have given me better information about her. then maybe it would not have taken me so long to figure it out and she would not have had to go through that.
so that's the story of bringing home lily. i am guessing she is about 6 months give or take because she started molting in late sept and she is now looking very dapper with her new orange and yellow feathers where there used to be green, and now solid green on her back now instead of the spotty feathers she had. all her new feathers are well formed with no spots, so i am happy about that and consider it a sign she has been getting good nutrition. if anyone is so inclined, i could use some help devising and introducing the best diet for her without losing her current eating routine (she needs routines).
so that's lily. beautiful, wonderful, shiny, adorable perfect lily.
