After graduating from the Vet Tech program, I went to work for a zoo and avian vet in Lodi, CA named Dr. Turner. I was the avian specialist of the practice all while I was attending UC Davis’ Avian Sciences program. One day at the practice, an older women and her grown son brought in their bird named Charlie. He was to be boarded with the clinic for 2 months while she went on vacation. Her son handed me the bird in a pillowcase with strict instructions to take it straight back to a cage and not to touch him for fear of losing a finger to his terrible beak. For the first week that Charlie was with us at the clinic, I would sit in the back room where he was being boarded during my lunch break and eat lunch with him. I would carefully share my fruits with him through his cage bars and talk to him about my day. He seemed to be listening and maybe even a little interested.
After a week of my visits to the back room, I wanted to take the relationship further. I had been studying companion avian behavior in school and was ready to try out some of my newly acquired knowledge. I caught Charlie in a towel and took him into the front of the hospital while it was closed and put him on the floor just to see what he would do. The idea was to get him out of his known surroundings so that the only thing familiar to him would be me and hopefully he would react favorably to me as a result. When I opened the towel and placed him on the floor, he looked very confused and unsure of himself for the first time since I had known him. He took a moment to look around the room and started to walk in my direction. I put my hand down on the ground and he stepped onto it and as a reward, I offered him a seed treat. That was the beginning of our ‘step-up’ training, which evolved into a beautiful friendship.
When the lady came to pick up Charlie, I brought him out on my hand to her, instead of in his pillowcase. She was stunned and asked if I would like to have him as my own. A couple weeks later, I went over to her house and picked up the cage and Charlie. Apparently the old lady was scared of the bird and hadn’t really taken him out of the cage for 10 years and by the looks of the cage, she hadn’t really cleaned it in 10 years either! It was a huge job of cleaning and I originally thought the cage was a dark brown. It turned out to be white. I changed Charlie’s name to Zaire after his ancestor’s land. After running all his blood work and fixing up his house next to Mali’s house in my home, he moved in. Zaire can be anywhere from extremely grouchy to very happy. He is an emotional and intelligent being who is so different from the even keel of Mali’s demeanor.
