Griffin the Conure Has A Bad Day (has swearing)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Near disaster today at my house.

We were all sitting around enjoying some peace and quiet when one of our birds
SCREAMS.
Not the normal “I’m a bird, I make lots of noise!” screams but
"SOMETHING IS EATING ME ALIVE I’M DYING!!!"
screams (it is *amazing *how much volume a small bird can pump out). The two cockatiels shoot off the dresser adding their high-volume distress calls to the din, so that means it’s the conure in trouble. She flutters across the dresser top,then onto the floor.

Dragging a mousetrap.

Oh FUCK! The bird is caught in a mousetrap! Oh FUCK FUCK FUCK! She’s flopping around so violently I’m not sure what’s caught, she’s still screaming horribly, and both me and the Other Half are trying to grab this flailing green ball of feathers that is generating one long, continuous, agonized, fear-filled, pain-wracked SCREAM.

The Other Half gets ahold of her and gets the mousetrap off her leg. Well, yes, I suppose in retrospect it was obvious it wasn’t clamped on her neck as she was clearly able to breathe well enough to scream but in panic-mode you imagine such horrors. We’re imaging severed limbs, shattered bones, etc.

The conure lapsed into silence as soon as the trap was off her, clutching her injured limb to her belly and trembling. I was shaking, too. The Other Half couldn’t see any obvious fractures, and she didn’t scream when he touched her injured foot.

Then there was the round of self-flagellating on the part of the Humans, who were stupid enough to have forgotten about that trap, baited with tasty peanut butter that appeals to birds as well as the rodents we’ve been trying to eliminate.

Griffin (that’s the conure) has been very quiet since then, and is either jammed into her favorite corner of the room, up near the ceiling where she feels safe, or huddled in my Other Half’s hands. She’s a pet bird, of course, rather sheltered, and nothing has ever bit her like that before. She doesn’t understand danger, and she probably thought something was trying to eat her.

She is, I’m happy to report, putting her weight on the trapped foot and is able to grasp fingers with it. I imagine she’ll be sore for a bit, but apparently no permanent harm done. Other than perhaps taking a year or two off the humans’ lives with that panic-inducing scream. We had purchased smaller than normal, less violent than normal snap traps just in case such an accident occurred. I’m not happy we got stupid and careless, but apparently the new traps weren’t able to maim her.

2

{{{ Griffin }}} Very gentle, non threatening hugs.
Glad that you broomstick and Other Half have lived through screaming. I hope the next few weeks are less eventful.

3

I have a free range bird too, which obligates me to keep my apartment completely bird safe. Please keep your birds caged the next time you need to set mouse traps. I have not always been 100% on top of it either, although so far the only problem we’ve had was when Byrd, a parrotlet, saw that I’d left the top off of the jar of pet treats, and spelunked himself into a space too small for him to open his wings again. When I came home I heard a plaintive twerping and turned the light on to find sheepish jarred bird, and poop-ruined treats. So far no toilet or stove mishaps; I remain vigilant on those counts. And luckily no mice.

Best wishes to Griffin. Byrd says “Whut up yo?”

4

We’ve been very careful about setting and deactivating the traps, but it only takes one time, as demonstrated. Thought we’d gotten them all, had forgotten one, and let the birds out. Normally they’re closely supervised but, again, it only takes one time.

They are banned from the kitchen when I’m cooking. The cockatiels at least know what the word “hot” means, but we’re careful only to use it on actually hot things. Griffin sort of knows the word, but still feels compelled to test things on her own sometimes. We just don’t take chances with her and cooking.

Toilets, things they can pull down on themselves, all sorts of hazards for little birds…

5

I had a similar situation happen to me with my old greyhound, Apollo. I was awoken one morning by an unearthly scream of anguish that went on and on. It sounded like a woman crying in pain, and I could only think that it was my mother. I raced down the stairs, shouting, “What happened?! What happened?!” It turned out Apollo had twisted his ankle racing around the house. He was fine and stopped howling as soon as he saw me, but I had had such a bad scare that I actually went white in the face, cold all over, and threw up.

6

Why don’t you take her to the vet?

7

How is Griffin doing today?

8

Poor Griffin. I’m sure I’d scream if a mousetrap bit me. When I read the thread title, I thought that it was the bird who was uttering obscenities.

9

Give Griffin a lot of head scratches and a couple of nutriberrys and he will calm back down,bet the next time he sees a mousetrap he’ll try to get as far away from it as posible. Next time you might want to try the sticky type of traps,no moving parts and if the bird gets into it they just get stuck to it and a little cooking oil gets them unstuck.

10

Lack of funds. If her leg had obviously broken we would have bit the bullet and done so, but as she seems to be using it normally it’s probably OK. It’s also 5 degrees out, the nearest avian vet is 30 miles away, and we’d have to deal with keeping a very tropical bird warm in an Indiana winter on the way there. For a broken leg, sure. For a bad scare, no.

The leg that got caught is the one with her breeder leg band on it. If the trap mostly closed on the band that might be why she escaped major injury. Not that we want to run any experiments to confirm this…

Acts like nothing happened. Almost (read on)

So far as I know, she hasn’t learned any. We’ve been careful to minimize the swearing in front of her, as she is quite a talker.

Griffin has been acting like nothing happened. Until she caught sight of the (deactivated) trap on the shelf. Then she got all slicked down and alarmed looking and found and excuse to go elsewhere quickly.

We had a bird lose half his feathers and almost drown in the glue one time, about 15 years ago with one of those.

Fact is, most if not all of what traps/kills rodents will also work entirely too well on birds. We just have to be so damn careful, all the time, every time. Griffin acts like nothing happened, the humans in the household are still kicking themselves over it.

11

I did a terrible thing to my cat, Cammie, yesterday. I thought would be amusing to see her reaction to sort of stepdaughter’s zhu zhu hamster (an electronic squeaking toy on whizzy wheels). At first she didn’t notice it, not even when it bumped into her tail. “Ho ho I said she hasn’t even no…” Then notice it she did and tried to run away. And run away she could not for for the little whizzy wheels had whizzed in and wound up her fur and she had the zhu zhu hamster firmly attached to her tail. It’s funny now but it wasn’t then, as the poor thing charged madly about with the zhu zhu chirrupping and whirring behind her. She went over the sofa and behind the TV before I caught her on her way to the door. We had to cut the thing out with the hairdressing scissors.

Cammie hid behind the bookcase for an hour but she’s forgiven me now, not least because she hasn’t realised I was responsible for the hamster thing as well as the being held down and having hair cut thing. I am a bad bad person.

12

Heh. You’d probably know it if she has learned bad words. Because she WOULD use them. I can tell you that human kids can pick up many words and phrases, and have an uncanny ability to play them back at the most embarrassing times.

As for the zhu zhu hamster, we don’t have one. However, we do have a remote control rodent thingy which is marketed for cats. The cats are fascinated by it, and all ears and whiskers go on alert when we pick up the remote for that toy.