This post has turned out to be a bit of a PITA. It has been composed and ripped apart several times, and was eventually put on hold so that 'Giant' could go up.

The problem is the subject matter. To generalise, it is about survival, but it has nothing to do with 'human survival'. The will to live is the strongest instinct of any living thing, but sometimes it takes a bit of outside help to attain that state of grace. In retrospect, it is still an up-beat tale, despite the hero being a BIRD!

I will try and compress the story into as few words as possible, but you get fair warning at this stage that some of the images will not sit well with the squeamish.

Fast rewind to 3 years ago. Isabel, Maria's friend, offloaded a ball of feathers on to Maria due to her inability to provide the constant care the little chick required. The chick had been kicked out of the nest by one of Isabel's breeding couples. Maria took on the challenge and I dubbed the fluff-ball 'Beaky' on the grounds that that was all she appeared to be; one massive beak that needed constant filling! Later, when she started to show signs of maturity (egg laying and nest building are a classic giveaway) we got her a mate. Fully adult, very nervous and totally incompatible with the female. She rejected him and he sat in a corner fluffed up and looking dejected. Maria refused to accept this standoff, so she grabbed one in each hand, held them beak-to-beak, and gave them a stern talking to. She then put them back in the cage, and I kid you not, within minutes they were billing and cooing like the lovebirds they are supposed to be! The rest is history.

 
 

The last pic is of only four of about 30 chicks that the original pair have produced (we've lost count), and they have another full nest even as I write. The problem is to find homes for the offspring with people we consider 'suitable'. The vetting procedure is stringent and so far, bar one 'escapee', we have been satisfied that they are all being well looked after.

FF to September this year and the couple two floors down from us, recipients of three of our birds (they had the 'escapee'), asked timidly if we could look after their birds as they had managed to snag a late 10 day holiday. The reason for the request was that their pair was now breeding and had already produced one chick from a nest of four eggs. Could we manage? Damn silly question, since all these birds came from this source in the first place!

The day after they'd left, the second chick was born. Three days later Maria observed weird behaviour by the adults. The female appeared to be spending too much time off the nest and the male was making no attempt to feed her or the chicks. Maria checked, and to her horror this is what she found.

  

Maria donned her nurse's uniform (always like it when she puts on her nurse's outfit) and set to work cleaning up the mess. 'Água Oxigenada' was applied liberally and flaps of skin were gently manoeuvred back into place. Two-hourly feeds from a syringe were started and by the time the couple from downstairs came back 7 days later, they were able to take home two relatively healthy babies. Feathers had started sprouting to disguise the wounds, and apart from having to be hand fed for several more weeks, they were as 'normal' as any hatchlings.

Why did the mother attack the chicks? Dunno! Maybe she is not ready to be a parent as yet.

Sadly, the story didn't end there. About ten days later the woman from downstairs, totally distressed, phoned Maria to tell her that the little chick had suffered a setback and now had a twisted neck. We invited her up so that we could have a look at it. Sure enough, the poor little sod couldn't hold his head up and was carrying it, bent, beak down, at a 90 degree angle to the norm. Decision time. Looked like it would have to be the chloroform bottle as this wasn't something you could rectify with the magical 'Água Oxigenada'. Maria asked her to leave it with us, reassuring her that we would be as kind as possible when the time came to put this wee one out of its misery.

After the woman had left, Maria offered the chick a bit of food from a syringe. He gulped it down and then took aboard a copious amount of water before lowering his beak to the floor and promptly going to sleep. A quick trawl of the internet threw up the information that 'love-birds' and 'budgies' sometimes suffered from this disability, and that they were referred to as 'Stargazers'. They could apparently live fairly normal lives; walking, climbing and flying, compensating all the while for the disability. It was also suggested that this condition could be caused by an inner-ear infection and that it was treatable. Voilà! The chloroform bottle was returned to the top shelf.

Off to the vet the next day. She specialises in avians. Yes, she had seen this before, and yes, it was often treated successfully. No promises, but she prescribed a course of antibiotics to clear up the ear infection if that was what the problem was. Two days later the little blighter was holding his head up straighter. Not that we believed our eyes, you understand! We felt more that it was wishful thinking on our part.

We didn't take any pictures of this period of his life because we felt it was inappropriate to photograph a bird that was about to be put to sleep. The earlier pics were fine because we needed photographic evidence to show the owners, especially if things had gone bad. This time, we knew instinctively that he had reached the end of his travels, whatever the outcome!

I've bestowed on him the title of 'Rambo', based purely on his apparent ability to overcome all the odds. The difference is that this little guy is for real. He continues to improve by the day. He still flies like a brick, but he is getting stronger and more adept as time moves on. He still begs to be hand-fed if he thinks he can get away with it, but he has begun to discover the bins of food laid out for him, and we often find his crop is stuffed full without any help from us. The one ritual he continues to observe is to stridently demand to be let out of his cage when he hears movement in the house.

Here he is nearly three months later ...

This little fella is here to stay. He is slowly beginning to bond with the adult birds and appears to tease them now that he knows he can fly out of danger when there is threat of a winged attack. He doesn't have an inbuilt fear mechanism, certainly not with humans or dogs!

Don't believe me? Take a look ...

If you've stayed with me this long I am sure you'll agree that it was a tale worth telling.

Even if birds aren't your bag ...