Tonight, Bentley - a Blue Front Amazon of unknown age - was dropped off at my home. I will be fostering him until he gets adopted. Bentley is in pretty bad shape, but he is on a 10-day, twice a day regimen of Cipro (1st dose was administered tonight), he is in a much larger cage for him to explore and move around and with a better diet i hope he will lose some weight, lower his cholesterol, get the vitamins necessary for good health and regrow much of the feathers he has plucked out on his back and underbelly.
Bentley seems to have a hard time breathing sometimes. the vet says this is due to his vitamin deficiency and overweight body.
before putting him into his new cage, we had to towel him to give him his first dose of Cipro. that went ok. we then put him in his cage and his chest and head were heaving. poor guy. after settling down, he actually started roaming around and looking for his food. he went to his food bowl and promptly picked out a pine nut. he kept wandering over to his food bowl and then across the cage to the other side where so far his "favorite perch site" is. he did this about 3 times, each time he went to get a pine nut.
i also gave him an almond and a half a peanut. he took both of them very nicely from my fingers through the bars of his cage. he then wandered over to a seed "stick" (one of those long sticks with seeds molded all around it) and started biting on that. seeing that he was happily willing to walk all over his cage made me very hopeful that he will get the much needed exercise his body needs.
after a while of talking and singing to him and watching him maneuver around his cage, i left the room and my husband goes in and spends some time with him. in just a few minutes, i heard some singing and funny noises coming from inside our bedroom (his quarantine room). it was bentley having a "conversation" with my husband! how cute! bentley sang, whistled, trilled, squeeked and squawked as my husband talked and whistled to him. he continued this even after i entered the room. it was quiet a wonderful thing to see him get so comfortable so quickly. bentley even honored us with a contented tail-wag.
when zeba (our other foster - see his blog at http://zebasjournal.blogspot.com) heard bentley's voice, he would also start talking. it was a little bit of talking back and forth between the two, as well as with my own amazon.
its just the beginning of the honeymoon period, so things may change. so far i believe bentley likes my husband more than me by the way he seems more alive around my husband. i hope to convert him to a pelleted diet and away from the just seed diet he only accepts at the moment.
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