#boggle budge

Boggle died last Friday night. We came home from our vacation and the next morning we saw that he was sick with what appeared to be a standard respiratory infection. Rushed him to the avian vet, where he got antibiotics and supplemental oxygen, and the prognosis seemed very good based on his energy and physical condition. Sadly, he declined steadily and by Friday morning it was clear he wouldn’t make it. We were with him at the end.

We don’t know if there was anything the bird sitters (who were bird newbies, but were at least staying at our apartment) could have done, or what led to it. We don’t know anything about Boggle except that he came from outside - he could have been old, could have been permanently damaged from being outside, or from a previous illness, or maybe it could have been the heat of the days before that made him susceptible. We do know that we had a good two years with him and he was a happy bird who was in great condition up until that point, and we always tried to spoil him rotten in healthy ways. We miss him a lot. Even our family who don’t really get the whole “pet” thing miss him. It’s made my SO’s birthday into a sad anniversary, but I guess that’s the trade-off.

The other two birds are doing surprisingly well - I think they intuited what happened since they saw him when he was ill. They had to endure a day at the vet and (despite some weird snuffling from Curry last Monday that I had literally never seen him do before) they don’t seem to have what Boggle. They’re being tested for some of the chronic underlying illnesses that they could carry and then suddenly fall ill from just to rule them out. As it so happens, they were carrying the protozoan parasite trichomonas (probably not the direct cause of Boggle’s fate), although they’ve never shown symptoms and are otherwise in impressive physical condition. They’re being treated for that and it’s going pretty well, although it turns out that Curry can bite like a mofo when he wants to and to be honest I didn’t know cockatiels could even bite that hard! They don’t seem too traumatized by being grabbed every day and fed gross stuff. We’ll get the results of the tests sometime next week probably - they have to be shipped to a lab in Germany, so it takes a bit longer.

Now that we have the space, we’re starting to look at birds who need new homes, especially another cockatiel (and then hopefully a friend for Biscuit if Curry reacts well). Nothing final until we’re done with the trichomonas treatment and have the results of the tests back, though.