Myrtle was an African Gray Parrot with attitude. Originally caught in the wild she grew up living the life of a pirate's parrot for years sailing from one port to another. When Myrtle's caregivers were in Nanaimo they noticed she became very quiet and slowly was going off of her food.
Birds are often heroic when they are sick and hide the fact they are not feeling well. In the wild if they did not eat or acted sick they would quickly become predated upon or attacked by their own species. When we hear of a bird acting sick we know it usually means they are very sick and have been sick usually for some time. We got Myrtle in right away and as I examined her I knew she was in grave condition. Myrtle's breast bone stuck out sharply between her atrophied breast muscles indicating she was burning muscle for energy and not eating enough. She was low on reserves so I knew I had to hospitalize her while we waited for tests.
The blood tests indicated severe liver disease and I knew the treatment would require a long hospitalization. An incubator was set up and we gave Myrtle antibiotics and vitamins by injection and tube fed her high energy food three times daily. Myrtle's caregivers continued on their sailing trip but kept in touch by phone on a daily basis. Although the progress was slow we could see some improvement every day. Slowly Myrtle began to pick at and then eat her food and we could decrease the tube feeding. One day we suddenly heard her give a wolf whistle. Finally she began to talk and we thought that was a good sign of returning health. One morning almost three months since she first arrived at our hospital I arrived early for treatments and heard a series of profanity coming from her incubator. My first thought was how did she get to learn such language and I only had to hope that it wasn't at our vet hospital.
The profane language continued through the day and the staff would giggle at the birds inappropriate language. No one confessed to teaching the bird the swear words so later in the day when Myrtle's caregivers called I had to tell them about the sudden onset of profanity. I heard a loud laugh on the other side of the phone as they exclaimed "That is the best news I heard for a while…..Myrtle always swears and to hear that she is doing that again can only tell me she is finally getting well!"
