If you follow our Instagram, then you already know about the incident we had Tuesday. 😖 I've started working from home & so the birdies get to stay out all day. They are so much happier! Well, I've been letting them out of their cages in the living room and working in my office, which is the first turn down our hallway. The door is open so they can come hang out on the play stand, but they rarely ever do. They've done well to play independently on their cages and not get into any trouble. I come out and check on them regularly and take cuddle breaks. They are literally like 6 feet away from me. Well, it was after lunch when I heard a lot of fussing, which I realized quickly was probably a squabble. I bolted around the corner and Gilly was on top of Sam's cage, which she does often, and Sam was in his cage with the door open. He was clinging to cage bars on the side and she was sitting on the cage bars on the top. They were bickering between the bars for whatever reason. So I rush over to get Gilly off and they are just steady bird cussing each other. Sam had moved away when he saw me come to rescue him, but Gilly wanted to stand her ground and fight it out. 🙄 Small bird syndrome. So I gently pry her off the cage and as soon as she's removed from the chaos she pulls her leg in like she's hurt. I do a quick check and see no blood. Inside I'm panicking. I glance over Sam, he's fine. I take Gilly to my office and at this point she's bleeding. It's clear she has some kind of injury. The bleeding didn't seem so bad, but knowing Sam's beak, I figured her leg and/or foot was fractured. I immediately text everyone I know who could help me. My vet is out of town. The back up vets are an hour away. My husband calls the avian vet. It's about 4 o'clock and they won't stay there to see us because they stop seeing patients at 4:45 and I can't get there until 5:00-5:30. He calls the ER vet, we need an appointment. WHAT THE HELL!?! By this point the bleeding has stopped and I've seen her rub her head with her foot so I'm just not sure the extent of the injury and what to do. Feeling absolutely helpless and terrified and trying not to cry when I get work calls while I'm sitting at my desk consoling my baby bird. Finally the director of the rescue where I got Sam sees my messages and tells me to call her. I immediately start bawling my eyes out when she answers. She told me from her experience and based on the details I gave her, she would probably wait until the next day, which ended up being a good thing since the ER vet failed me! She said when they clip nails for blood work she has had birds hold their foot for two days afterwards. Ok that's a relief, because at this point I start questioning if we have more injury or more bruised ego. She told me to watch the ankle band, which I was already worried about; but this band, which I've debated for the last year on removing, is probably what saved the day. That band assumably took the most impact from the bite, sparing Gilly's bones and minimizing trauma. At this point my husband comes home and Gilly is excited to see him. She's using her foot gently, but had a limp. She was still willing to do whatever possible to get hemp seeds. Once he was home to hold her I was able to really examine her leg and feel it and move it. She checked out ok. All good signs. I put her up for a couple of hours to eat and rest and before I went to bed I checked her for swelling. The next day she seemed a lot better and she's made progress since then. The only remnant of this fiasco is that her grip strength hasn't returned 10/10, but it gets stronger every day. She has no issues walking, climbing, perching, hopping or landing with both feet. She ultimately suffered a small laceration, strain or contusion to the foot/lower leg and a badly bruised ego! It took me a solid 3 hours to calm down after all this happened. We got so lucky. Thank God for that ankle band. Gilly is now either in my office with me when she's out or they are both secured in their cages. FYI - it's not easy trying to work with a bird obsessed with your mouse, keyboard, or phone. Especially a bird who likes to push the receiver button that hangs up on people. But it's worth not ever going through that again!!
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