I almost lost my precious Skittles ( ) the other day. I got too relaxed and made a stupid mistake by taking him out with me to make a quick appointment to get my car looked at. We were in an enclosed garage, but the door opened, spooked Skittles and he flew up on the roof of the dealership and then was scared away by crows. I was running around calling for him hysterically for what felt like hours. The dealership was kind enough to let me go on their roof to look for him, but there was no sign. I called and looked in the trees across the road and everything. Then my dad came to help in the search and I was telling him what happened and where I had looked when suddenly I heard the most wonderful squawk I had ever heard.
We found Skittles underneath one of the dealership's cars, waiting to be rescued. I scooped him up and he ran into my shirt to hide in the process. All of the staff and customers clapped and cheered and I skipped making a car appointment and just took him home to spoil the heck out of him and made a vet appointment to make everything was okay.
So, I already feel like a terrible bird owner for that but there's another thing I did that I'm not proud of...I clipped his wings again. I know, I'm about to get a wall of angry text from you guys about how it's my fault, not his and I realize that. I SHOULD have him trained on a harness if I want to take him out with me so this type of thing doesn't happen. The fact that I lapsed in his training is my fault entirely. But I am just SO AFRAID that something like this could happen again before I get him trained well enough to go out with unclipped wings. I want to be able to take him out on the front or back porch so he can see and hear the sights without being terrified I might lose him. This is the only way I can do that until he's harness trained.
Believe me, I am really, really sad about this. Watching him learn to fly was sort of like watching your kid learn how to walk. I was so proud of him. He was even learning how to fly to his perch! God, I feel so bad...but I just don't see any other way until I get him using a harness to let him see the outside other than carrying his travel cage around...
Lessons learned:
* Cutting a flighted bird's wings feels really, really awful
* Don't get too relaxed when your bird is around
* Birds will never be predictable, even when you think you know them, you don't
* Harness training, harness training, harness training
Ugh, part of me just wants to go find a dark corner and hide...