For the love of birds

My family has always had a love for animals. Unfortunately due to my grandson being allergic to both cats and dogs we remained a fur-less family for a long time.

Yes of course we tried all kinds of other pet family members like goldfish’s, a turtle named Shell-don, and yes even a bearded dragon named Opi. The kids loved all of them of course, but they wanted a more interactive pet family member.

That’s when we looked into no kill shelters for birds. It is one of the most rewarding things we could have ever done as a family. It enabled the kids to be responsible and helped show the birds to trust again. Don’t get me wrong a lot of these birds were abused and neglected. So it took time, patience and love to help them heal. What helped was the kids, a love a child shows is seriously the purest form of love there is.

The birds ate, watched TV, played video games, showered, listened to music, danced, tattletaled on each other, splept on the boys and learned to trust and love again. The boys of course understood that we were only fostering them and that the birds would eventually get adopted out. It was hard to say goodbye and oh so many tears that broke my heart, when it was time to say goodbye. Lucky for us not too much longer another one would move in and we start all over again. I promise you we wouldn’t want it any other way.

So we became a feathered family. We fostered Woody a loud mouth cockatoo who loved to dance to Moana. Didn’t like to share his apples and longed for his bath time. Ruby a green concur who would fall asleep to jazz and tried to preen every member of the family. Smoky who seriously only loved himself and would stare and whistle to himself all day long, and loved you if you had earring on. Pikacho who loved Smoky and couldn’t keep her eyes off him and tried to feed him her food to get him to like her. We are thankful that we had the opportunity to foster them. We fostered many other feathered family members as well and each one had their own personalities, likes and disliked. It was very interesting to see what craziness would happen next! There is one thing for sure that each bird loved the kids they were the birds favorite peoples in the house. They walked with us to the bus stop before school and couldn’t wait to pick them up after. They went shopping for groceries, played at the playground and loved the park just like the boys do. Each one knew the day of the week when it was their turn and sounded thier alarm to remind us who’s turn it was. Yes! Birds are highly intelligent beyond belief.

Our family made the decision to adopt a bird named Gizmo. Gizmo is a pineapple cheek concur who likes to cuss! Yes you read it right cuss. Now when you have a 9 year old and a 4 year old in the home it was a stuggle to make the kids not repeate the Bad words coming out of Gizmos beak. Holy goodness it was bad lol! Gizmo loves to fall asleep to the song ‘Everything’ by Lauren Daigle and loved to dance to Justin Bieber. He hates carrots but loves snap-pees. He now only says Sh**. Thank goodness, we got him to forget the other bad words. Gizmo yells mom when he wants to tell on someone, Tristan when he wants to be carried around, peek a boo when he wants to sleep and loves all the attention and love a bird could ever ask for.

I do want to add it takes so much time, patience, attention, understanding, love , and beak bite marks to get them ready for adoption. Birds aren’t ment to be caged up and are supposed to fly freely. Thier nest in trees, and surrounding with other birds, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. So many are bought, neglected, abused and killed. They were born in a cage and wouldn’t know how to survive if set free. So please look into no kill bird shelters if you are thinking of getting a bird as a family member. Foster first to see if it’s a right fit for you. Finally all animals should be loved and respected. They have feelings and longed to be loved. Yes even the goldfish, if you thinking of any pet to bring home please make sure to take care of them and truly love them as a family member.

This is for all the birds that don’t fly south your welcome to come over to our house. We promise to keep you warm in the winter.

By: Susan Merlette (Gizmos mommy)