Eclectus and Death of a Loved One

It has taken me a long time to get to the point where I can write about this, but time has softened the blow now, and I wanted to share my experience with others who may find themselves in the same situation.

I think sometimes we don't take our parrots’ feelings into consideration when there’s a death in the family. We are so emotionally distraught that we sometimes forget that our birds are feeling, sentient beings who also have ties to their family.

When my father passed away, he had been in the hospital for a week and like a fool, I never gave a thought to what Birdlet, Snakebird, Marvin and Beebee might be feeling about the situation. I never told them anything, didn't involve them in anything, and just did my grieving on my own without including them. For weeks after my father’s death, Birdlet would fly through the house from room to room yelling, “ALF! ALF!”, looking for my dad (whose name was Ralph, but Alf was as close as Birdlet could come). I realized then that I had made a major blunder in not including Birdlet in my grief.

Two years ago my mother’s health started declining drastically and, as I was the only single kid in the family, and the most mobile, she asked me to move back with her because she was afraid of living alone. I packed up the whole flock (8 birds at the time) and moved back to Indiana. The flock lived the Life of Riley having my mom home all day with them, and Birdlet had become very attached to my mom while I was working a job in Tennessee for six months and she was keeping the flock (3 birds at the time) for me.

When Mom started going downhill and I moved back to Indiana, Birdlet was no longer “my” bird; he was Mom’s. He thought my mother walked on water consistently and I was mere pond scum. Birdlet had so many emotional problems that I was more than willing to accept this situation as it made him happy and a happy Birdlet was much better than an angry Birdlet!

About a year after I moved back, we had to put Mom in the hospital because her health had deteriorated to a point where I couldn't take care of her at home. It was then that she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and the prognosis was extremely bad. She had surgery which removed a lot of the cancer, but it had spread to a point where they couldn't get all of it. I went home that day in shock and told Birdlet that things didn't look good for Gramma at all, and that she was very sick and might not get to come home from the hospital.

However, Mom rallied and two weeks later I got the call to come and pick her up. I called my sister to tell her to come down and help me get Mom in the house, so by the time I got back with Mom, my sister and her husband were already there. We got Mom in bed and the first thing I did was go to Birdlet’s cage and open it, telling everyone to DUCK! Birdlet instantly flew into my mom’s bedroom and climbed up on her chest with his head under her chin, and that’s where he stayed until 7:00 that night when I finally pried him loose so Mom could get some sleep.

Things went along pretty well for about nine months; then the cancer took hold again with a vengeance. As Mom’s health continued to go downhill, Birdlet wanted to spend more and more time with her, trying to feed her and just wanting to be close to her. The day finally came when we realized that Mom didn't have too many more days left with us. She had been feeling so rotten that I hadn't let Birdlet bother her for about a week, but when time was getting short, I let him go visit with her. He knew something was drastically wrong those last two days, because he didn't try to climb on her at all. He just stood right next to her head on the pillow and watched.

In the meantime, I had contacted Carolyn Swicegood to see what I should do when Mom finally passed away, and we came to the decision that I should take Birdlet into her room after she was gone so he could see for himself that Gramma wasn't going to be there anymore. We decided this was the route to go because of Birdlet’s delicate psyche, which had been through more shocks than any one parrot should see in a lifetime, along with being almost killed with a dose of Halodol from a supposedly great avian vet. To say Birdlet was messed up in the mind is an understatement! We thought it would be too much for him to bear if Mom just suddenly disappeared and never came back. He had enough problems the two weeks she was in the hospital, flying to her room and staying there while she was gone and continually calling for her.

Finally, on July 23, 2001, we knew her time had come and I took Birdlet in for one last visit that afternoon.

At 10:00 that night, I woke up not hearing Mom breathing over the baby monitor, and when I went to check on her, I found that she had peacefully slipped away from us. After calling my sister, I went to Birdlet’s cage and told him what had happened, and took him in to see Mom. He started to step down onto her pillow and just froze. He didn't move, he didn't breathe, he didn't even move his eyes. He just stared at Mom and KNEW she was gone. I took him out of the room and cuddled him while I cried my eyes out and grieved with him as much as possible before everyone got there.

When the funeral home called us a couple of days later and said that Mom was ready for us to see, I asked the funeral director if it would be ok if I brought Birdlet up with me. He had absolutely no problem with that, having been raised with an Amazon parrot, so I took Birdlet along and let him see where Gramma was now. I couldn't see his reaction because he was standing on my shoulder, but my sister said he just stood there staring, and finally turned his head and buried it in my hair. Birdlet and I went for a long drive after that and I talked to him about the whole situation and how it was just him and me now to look after each other.

I couldn't take him to the funeral or I would have. Mom was to be buried about 75 miles from where we live, and I didn't think that a trip that long would be good for Birdlet, along with sitting through the funeral. As much as I wanted him to be there, I had to leave him at home. My mind was on him all day, though, and I rushed home afterwards to see how he was doing.

Birdlet was depressed for some time afterwards, but I honestly think he did much better than he would have had we not involved him in everything that was happening. The one thing I was afraid of was that he would start ripping out his feathers again, which is his usual reaction to heavy stress, but he handled the whole situation very well. About a week after the funeral he did clip some feathers, but nothing like he had done in the past, and he quit clipping feathers in a couple of days. Moving into a new cage in a new location may have had more to do with that than my mother’s passing, however, because as soon as I moved his new cage back over where it had been, he quit chewing his feathers.

Today, Birdlet has recovered as much as is possible for him and no longer flies into the room that was Mom's looking for her. In fact, he never did fly into her room looking for her after he saw she was gone. He’ll go in there now, but always on my shoulder. He did revert to babyhood for a few weeks, wanting me to feed him by hand and sticking to me like he was glued on, but after about a month he started becoming more normal and within about six weeks he was doing just fine.

The point of this story is to let people know we should never forget our birds when there’s a family tragedy. They have very deep feelings for their chosen people, and to exclude them from the dying process, which, after all, is only a part of life, is negligent and almost cruel. It would also have been cruel to my mother not to let her see and hold Birdlet one last time so she could say her goodbye to him. Whether she did or not I don't know, but at least they had that last few minutes together.