Carl

A few years ago I made a mistake by checking out the new Methuen ASPCA facillity. It is quite clean and beautiful. They rescue a lot of farm animals at this facility. I've seen horses, chickens and ducks. Inside, I saw the usual group of up-for-adoption pets such as dogs and cats plus a special section for bunnies and birds. Most of the dogs here were pit bulls or pit bull mixes. I am guessing these dogs are from the Lawrence/Lowell/Haverhill area. Most of these dogs were brought in from the police.
It was a mistake for me to visit this rescue because I had to check out the birds.
There were a few conures, a pionus, a cockatiel and lots of budgies. I asked one of volunteers where all these birds came from. She told me a month ago they were confiscated from a horrible hoarding situation but didn't give me details. I inquired about two large green budgies bickering in a cage and what their story was. She told me that these birds were from that same hoarder. She said they were about 10 years old and that they needed to be adopted together.
$45.00 later (adoption fee) I came home with "Betty" and "Carl".
I named them after an older couple I was friends with because they were always bickering.
"Betty" was extremely huge and actually quite aggressive. I don't know why these two budgies had to be adopted together. Carl was actually scared shitless of Betty. Betty would swing on her swing and at each passing next to Carl she would peck him on the head. He would shake and quiver in the corner. I figured the kind thing to do would be to grant each parakeet their own cage. Carl seemed instantly relieved.
As bitchy as Betty was she proved to be quite attractive to "Pinkhead". Pinkhead was a year old blue and white American budgie. A year later, after meeting Betty, Pinkhead and Betty became a mated pair. Pinkhead was half the size of Betty. It was an absolute riot watching Pinkhead trying to climb onto of Betty positioning himself to mate. He looked like a jockey on a giant stallion. Half the time, grouchy ol' Betty would turn around, peck Pinkhead in the head and try to knock him off. Pinkhead's valiant efforts did pay off.
At the ripe old age of (I'm guessing) 12 years old Betty laid 12 eggs. One of those eggs did hatch and thus, Twillinger was born.
Carl was relieved that he had his own bachelor pad without any other birds bossing him around. He was old and he missing a few toes. Since the Methuen rescue did not have an avian vet on hand I didn't have any medical history on either of these birds. I did bring them both to my vet for check ups and at the time, everything seemed normal.
Betty grew quite vicious. When I was away on vacation both Pinkhead and Betty ganged up on sweet little Dixie and killed her. When Twillinger was born, I had to keep a close eye on Betty. Once in awhile Betty would peck Twillinger on the head.
Whook didn't want anything to do with her. One day, Betty didn't look too good. I took her to vet and she died shortly due to fluid build up in her abdomen.
Carl was having problems too. He was regurgitating constantly. At first, I thought it was mating thing since I would find puke all over his mirror but it went on for a long time. I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with megabacteria. This was something he was probably carrying from day one but did not surface until later. He was prescribed with amphotericin-B which is a pretty powerful antibotic twice a day for 14 days at .2ml. (The usual dosage of meds prescribed to budgies is .05ml. Administering .2ml is like making a human drink a gallon of the same equivalent!) It was impossible to get this much meds in this bird without killing him.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Two years later, he was still throwing up so I took him to a different vet.
Yup, he still had the megabacteria. She recommended euthanizing Carl at this point. I asked if there was anything else we could do. Carl seemed fine other than the vomiting. He was eating and carrying on normally. She recommended keeping Carl separately from other birds and sterilizing his cage at every cleaning. She also recommended this med that was from Australia called "Megabac-S". It was a powdered form of Amphotericin-B that you put in their drinking water. He would probably have to be on indefinitely. I figured, "OK, no problem".
This tiny bottle cost $150.00 each.
I bought two bottles plus special bird safe disinfectant.
It's been three years since the initial diagnosis. Carl is still hanging in there but still vomiting on occasion. He wakes up all happy and chirping every morning.
Ahhhhhhh! These birds!!!!