Saturday at the rescue

I didn't take any good pictures of my own parrots this weekend. I did capture one of Elsa, my female uromastyx lizard. My lizards are brumating right now, which I think of as a minor hibernation. A week will go by with them not emerging from their hides.

Friday, I returned home from work to a surprise: both lizards were out! As soon as I entered the living room, Andreas entered his hide (he may give me some kind of complex!), but Elsa seemed more energetic. She even ate some greens, which is rare for her during brumation.

Their story is similar to that I just read of Bikini on Sugar Selection's blog. We pity purchased them from a pet store that wasn't properly caring for them. It was the last day the store was in business, and we'd overheard the employees speculating about what would happen to them if no one purchased them. I couldn't get those thoughts out of my mind of these poor innocents suffering, so we brought them home. Like Bikini, they were captured from the wild to be sold as pets. It breaks my heart because even though we are providing the best possible home we can for them, it's nowhere near what they would have experienced had they been able to continue living in Africa.Saturday morning we had a race, the last one until Spring, and then we headed, tired, to the rescue. There weren't a lot of people that needed to be helped, so I got to spend time hanging out with and assembling toys for the parrots that live at the facility.

This little sun conure has a horrible scissor beak. You can't tell from this picture, but that's where the top and bottom beak don't line up, so the top goes off to the side. We're hoping that with proper trimming, it can be brought back to normal. She is one of the sweetest little birds, and incredibly beautiful. However, sun conures have very loud calls! She was perched on my bead container, supervising my toy-making progress:Thomas hadn't been up to the rescue for quite some time, and the macaws certainly missed him! I was able to capture this picture of him with one of his ladies:A terribly sad bird also came in. I didn't get a picture, but will try to later this week. A 25 year old mitred conure was surrendered. This bird was never even loved enough to have been given a name. He lived for about 20 years with an alcoholic whose favorite pasttime was terrorizing and teasing this poor conure. Finally, his dad had enough and brought the bird home to live with him for about 5 years. But he still didn't name the bird! He realized that he wasn't giving the bird what he needed, and surrendered him to us. He's now in a big cage, with tons of toys, and on a good diet.

After about 3 hours getting used to his surroundings, he came over to the side, soliciting my attention, and actually started saying "hello!" to me. It's so sad to think of what this poor creature has endured during his life. It won't be easy to find him a home. He's plucked out almost all of his feathers, and is not socialized.

I know I can't save everyone, but he's one that I wish we had room for, to give him a great last few years of life.

Sorry for such a depressing start to the week! I'll try to get some happy parrot pictures tonight!