arweena's very first blog

Thursday, October 26, 2006

The continuing saga of serafina pekkala...

This morning serafina pekkala got entangled in a stray piece of birdie toy. It was rather upsetting.

While packing my bag for the day, I heard a ruckus by cage #2, and looked up to see what looked like a run-of-the-mill spat between serafina and terfle. It was a little more flappy flap flap than usual, but not a big deal, so I continued my packing. Suddenly, I heard intense weird spastic wing flapping and looked up in time to see serafina freaking out on the top of the cage. She tried to launch up into the air and seemed to be somehow fiercely returned to the cage – like a smackdown. I put my bag down to investigate when suddenly she lurched off the side of the cage and fell straight down like a bungee jumper, flapping her wings and squawking the whole time. I, of course, was cool as a cucumber and screamed, “Serafina, No!!!!!” and tried to grab her. By now I had realized that there seemed to be some strange blue string that had somehow gotten unraveled from a birdie toy and wrapped around her… and through the wing flapping and general freaking out, it looked like it was possibly around her foot. Ok. “Breathe Arwen, breathe.” I knew that I had to get a hold of her, because every time she freaked out and flapped, she seemed to be pulling the blue string tighter. Through all of the, “it’s okay serafina, it’s okay, calm down, etcs”, I managed to yell, “Mr. Tart, help!”, which I’m sure freaked the shit out of him as he had JUST gotten out of the shower. He yelled, “What?!?!?!?” I yelled, “Help! Serafina!” And he came running. So by now, I have a hold of the poor little birdie, but I don’t have a free hand to sever the blue string so that I can at least walk away from the cage. Dave comes sprinting into the living room buck naked and takes in the situation quickly by, well, just looking at it, as well as through my helpful gasps of “serafina…caught…holding…ow…string…break…”. Ok. So Mr. Tart breaks the blue string about 4 inches from her body and I’m able to sit down on the couch with her for a bit just holding her with my hands and shielding her head. (When birdies have a fright or are sick or stressed, you are often told to put them in a darkened room.) We sat there on the couch together quietly…. breathing in unison. She had been so scared that she was still letting me hold her without a fight. And it struck me. It struck me so intensely. How can anyone think that these creatures do not have any capacity for feeling? Specifically – fear. Watching serafina freak out, desperately trying to get away from this thing that she did not understand… this thing that had captured her… and then feeling her go into a state of shock… and then waiting with her while her elevated heartbeat had a chance to go down a bit… well – it was all very traumatic because it was traumatic for her. Just as traumatic as if something similar had happened to me or you or a small child. Just as traumatic as it must be for a possum caught in a steel trap or a dolphin caught in fishing net or a monkey trapped in a tiny cage. Perhaps it makes me sound like a leftist west coast tree-hugging loony, but I was there and I felt it.

Anyway. Once dave got some pants on, he came back and we were able to assess the situation. The string was not around her foot. It was looking like maybe it was the wing, so we passed her between us as we tried to figure out a way to open her wing, while holding her. Then Dave was able to get a good grip on her while I got hold of the string and realized, holy crap, it had been around her little birdie neck! I pulled the string off gently and we got her back in the cage where she immediately started huffing and preening intensely. Within 5 minutes, she was still preening, but also seemed to be animatedly recounting her story to the other birdies.

Poor serafina – she’s already been through so much. Hopefully, she is fine. It’s always hard to tell with the birdies; it’s their natural instinct to hide illness. But at the end of the day it could have been a lot worse. Thank god I was in the room when it happened and thank god Dave was not feeling modest.

3 Comments:

At 2:29 PM, Blogger lumenatrix said...

Man, Sarafina has had more than her share of lumps lately. Hopefully this will be the end of it for her.

I'm glad she's ok. :)

 
At 5:54 PM, Blogger arweena said...

Thank you. :) Yes, the poor thing has had a bit of a black cloud over her as of late....I just shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't been in the room. But she seems to be doing pretty well. Right now she's actually making rather forward advances toward the Faerie Wogdog, who does not seem to mind. ;)

 
At 9:45 PM, Blogger Sarah Goss said...

Ohhhh, poor little Serafina! Thank God she's okay. We had a scare with Kerouac this weekend, too, though not nearly AS scary: when we got up in the morning we found little bloodstains all over the house-- I think we are still finding them. They were literally everywhere--all over the rug, on the kitchen floor, on the kitchen *table*, etc. They were paw-sized. Then we found a bloody claw (well, Mark found it--thank God it wasn't me, because I would have been beside myself). Apparently the blood clotted on its own so we didn't have to rush him to the pet ER, though we took him to the regular vet on Monday. He is fine, poor little guy. Geesh, though, these vulnerable little guys can give you a scare, can't they? It's so easy for them to get hurt...

 

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