Three days ago something really weird happened to my amazon Elliot, and I'm hoping someone might have heard about something like this before and can help me understand what was going on. I apologize in advance for what I think will be a long message, but I want to describe the incident thouroughly.
When I got up in the morning Elliot was his usual self, climbing around in his cage and up to his normal morning-chatter. I left the room for a few minutes to prepare food for him and when I got back he was sitting on the bottom of his cage, completely frozen. He did not fall down, that I am sure of since I would have heard - he must have calmly climbed down.
Now, when I say "frozen" I mean that he was sitting completely still, totally unmoving, no matter what I did. I've only had him for two months so he's not completely tame yet - usually when I touch and scratch him he will take a step away when he feels like I'm a bit too hands-on, but he sat paralyzed like that no matter if I touched his back, head or even lifted his feet.
When I lifted his feet up he slowly grasped my finger with his left foot, but his right foot was more or less stiff and he wouldn't grasp my finger with it.
I kind of freaked out - this was early in the morning so I had to just watch him sit there completely paralyzed for more than an hour before the animal hospital opened so I could call the vet. Since he wouldn't move (not even his head) and didn't grasp my finger with his right foot I was scared that he might have had a stroke or something(?). I was told by the vet that I could come in immediately - now, here's where things get funny:
I fetched the travel cage and when I reached in to pick him up he very slowly started moving again. First he slowly walked over to the wall of the cage, and then he slowly started climbing it until he reached his favorite perch. Even though he "snapped out of it" I made the decision to still bring him in to the vet, since I had no idea what made him "freeze" like that and he still didn't seem his usual self.
Once at the vet he climbed to the corner at the ceiling of the cage and calmly sat there in silence, still he seemed reluctant to move in general. He would barely even move his head.
The vet did a full exam, kept him for the day so they could do x-rays and draw blood for analysis, but at the end of the day they couldn't really tell me what was wrong with him either. When I came to pick him up in the afternoon (mind you, I had sat all day terrified that they would call me and tell me that he had died!) he was a bit more energetic and the vet said that he had been moving around in his cage and even talked some during the day.
I took him home, opened the travel cage and allowed him to step onto the floor and walk over to his cage on his own (it's something of a game we usually play, walking on the floor to get him accustomed to the house - I want him to always know where his "home" is no matter which room he's in, in case he'll take a flight and end up on the floor in the next room).
He was unusually still and quiet for the rest of the day, and didn't quite seem his usual self the day after either. Now, three days later, he's back to his usual self and we are still waiting for the results of the blood analysis..
Has anyone ever witnessed or heard of something like this? Does anyone have an idea of what might have caused him to freeze up like that? I've been terrified all weekend that he'd go into that "state" again - seeing him like that was frightening since I had no idea what to do and was so scared that he was dying or something..
There's no avian specialist anywhere near me, so the vet I saw couldn't give me much answers - they sent his blood and medical record to the nearest specialist (which is like, at the opposite side of the country (I live in Sweden btw)), so I'm hoping someone here might have a clue or at least an idea of what happened. I called the breeder and he has never heard of anything like this either.
Please help?