Uh oh! Watch out guys. Count Blucher is going to finger us.
I’m surprised I never starved a turtle to death, because we would find turtles in the wild and keep them in our house, and they just picked at the greens we left out for them, and it never crossed our minds that they might need some meat as well. Thankfully for them, we did let them out once a week or so (with a watcher) to get some fresh air and after a few times they always managed to dig a hole and escape.
Hopefully ASanders is using this as a teaching moment for the kids.
When I was a kid, I killed a goldfish that I accidentally boiled to death by leaving it in the car. (I’d just won it in a booth at Santa Cruz, and left it in it’s little baggy in the back window of the car while we had lunch.) I felt bad about it, and more so in hindsight. Well, duh stupid little me, of course the fish is going to boil in a sunny car window on a 90 degree California summer day. I don’t remember my mom saying anything about it. Probably she didn’t care. Those were the days when dogs were chained in the yard and no animals were allowed in the house. Today I find it kind of atrocious how we kept our animals back then. It was so callous and inhumane.
Psittacide.
Yeah, I’ve made my share of mistakes, who hasn’t? This one time a couple of years back, I accidentally tipped a quarter of a pound of “sugar” into this sloe gin I was making before I realized I’d got it from the salt jar. Sometimes I drop a glass, or load the dishwasher and forget to put it on, or leave one of the hotplates on when I’m done cooking. We’re all only human.
On the other hand, I seem to have never managed to let a pet die of hunger or thirst because I thought someone else would take care of it, so there’s that. But hey, everyone’s allowed to kill an animal or two before they learn their lesson, amirite?
That’s how I read your OP. I think it is good to remind everyone that these things can and do happen. Most people aren’t as open about it, so thank you.
As a kid, I was fond of animals, but was as clueless as any kid about caring for them. Neither did my parents, and they weren’t paying that much attention, either. So seven-year-old me did put a bowl with a goldfish on the central heating “so Fishy would be nice and warm”. :smack:
I feel your pain. Or that time we found a starved hedgehog in the sand pit. That memory led to my thread about swimming pool ramps for drowning wildlife.
Nowadays, as an active member of the Animal Rights Party (Yes, we’re a political party with a seat in parliament and everything!) we try to structurally change things so the likelyhood of such stuff happening becomes smaller. For instance, we have had recent success with a campaign to stop stores like Home Depot from selling live pets. If live pets are for sale in stores, the risk of parents buying a pet on impulse for the kids are way to big. Buying a pet should entail a conscious decision, a trip to a specialist who sells them and can advise on the care. Not an afterthought in Walmart of Home Depot.
Save yourself for Freddie. You and your “guys”. :dubious:
Have you tried some [del]parakeet[/del] chicken matzoh ball soup? That’s always good for me when I’m sick. Poultry soup with matzoh balls. MM-mm–good.
Agree with you 100%, but my brain crashed hard at this part. In the Netherlands, Home Depot sells animals?!? They do not do that here in the U.S. so I’m a bit shocked. (However, we do have pet stores that sell live animals, which I detest.)
Birds are very delicate creatures. It only takes a day or two without food or water to die. They don’t starve like a dog or cat. You can see when a dog or cat isn’t eating enough. You can ask the kids, “how often and how much are you feeding him?” Fix the problem. Birds just die.
I know the OP and his family feel terrible. A mistake was made. Learn from it. Eventually get another pet and be more attentive to its care.
Well, that’s the thing. We’ve had 4 of these little guys and with the exception of the one that got away, they all died (after many years), suddenly with cause unknown. Fine and happy one day, toes up the next.
Unless you autopsy a parakeet, you really don’t know.
No. Do not do this. Pets aren’t toys.
We actually check the crops on our birds when we put them to bed every night, and if they aren’t full we offer them food again. This does, however, require a very tame bird used to being handled.
Falconers weigh their birds every single day, monitoring their intake and increasing it if their weight falls even a small amount below their “hunting weight”. They don’t rely on appearances, even with a bird they interact with every single day.
(We’ve tried weighing our birds on a postal scale. At first they’re scared to death the scale will eat them. Then, when they discover jumping up and down can change the pretty lights on the read out we can’t get them to stay still. Oooo! Look what I can do!")
It is very, very easy for a bird to starve to death, and they don’t advertise their distress the way mammals do.
Which doesn’t make it OK - if you own a bird you do have a responsibility to learn about its needs and how to properly care for it.
We bought a gram scale with perch attachment to weigh our cockatiels, and used it many times. Eventually we began weighing them every single night. When it’s part of a ritual the birds become comfortable with it, just stepping onto the perch for a moment before going into the sleeping cage.
While I am appalled at the situation described in the OP, theer but for the grace of…well, constant attention, go I.
We have a dwarf hamster currently, rescued from the pound, to which he had been relegated because a family with four rambunctious children found him nippy. Because he’s not handleable, and because we have an inquisitive cat, Hannibal (so named because of his taste for human flesh) is in a room we can close off. We are now renovating the main living room, and the books from the wall of bookshelves are piled everywhere, we’re dealing with a high energy dog and other animals, and we’re tired at night. But I make it an iron law to check his water every night and feed him, even though he has a large water bottle and hamsters store food in caches, so he undoubtedly has too much squirreled away. I could check him every other day or so safely…but I do this to ingrain the habit in myself. Everybody forgets things unless they make them a priority, and one of my fears is suddenly remembering “Hey, don’t we have a hamster?” Shudder