Say Goodbye to Lucy

As you know the Man and I are bird-people...we're parents to three cool parrots. Well, up until a couple of weeks ago.

Miss Lucy, our 6 yr old Eclectus, has flown the coop...all the way to CT. Woo!

Our other two birds, Dice and Rodney, are still with us, and I hope to have them remain with us forever. So why Lucy? There's a couple of factors.

A) Airlines and the bird flu. At the moment we're down to two airlines that will let us take the birds into the cabin when we fly to St. Thomas. Cargo is an option for domestic flights - but 1) most airlines consider St. T international (even though it's a US territory) and 2) I'm not putting my birds in cargo. Period. So we figured we need to start thinking about life without birds - just in case the remaining airlines put the kibosh on in-cabin bird travel - and we decided to reduce our flock by one.

B) Rodney, our Grey, is completely devoted to the Man, and Dice, our Caique, is completely devoted to me. Lucy was completely devoted to....neither of us. I believe the most we were to her were people who got her out of the cage, brought her food and attempted to play with her. She didn't seem bonded with either one of us, and that decision led us to believe she would be the easiest to re-home. So we did.

C) Lucy is LOUD. And yes, all birds are loud, but Lucy has her own level of noise, and to be honest, when the Man (who works out of the house) was trying to take/make phone calls we'd have to banish Lucy to another room to keep the noise away. As you can imagine most birds do not like to be banished and would prefer to stay 'with the flock'.

I found a nice lady in CT who both breeds birds and keeps pet birds at her home. I emailed her with a picture of my girl and asked if she would consider taking her in, and she jumped at the chance. We drove Lucy down two weeks ago to a wonderful home where she was greeted by her new mom and two human sisters, 7 and 10yrs old. We saw her new room which holds 2 macaws, a cockatoo, a cockatiel, an amazon and a lovebird. Perfect! Lots of birds for Lucy to chatter (loudly) with and watch. I put a few of her favorite things in her new cage, gave her new mom a written list detailing all of Lucy's loves and hates and the Man pushed me out of the door just as my eyes filled up with tears.

We drove back to MA while I dried my eyes and we both agreed that she would be much happier there, with more birds to hang with and scream with.

I've definitely had my share of tears from giving her away, and the guilt? Oy, the guilt. I pictured her sitting in her new cage, thinking 'WTF? Where's my family?'. I pictured her feeling depressed, upset, unhappy...you name it. I told myself I was a horrible bird-mom for giving away my 'child'. I wondered what the other two were thinking when we left with Lucy and returned without her.

There's a happy ending. I waited a week before emailing Lucy's new mom to see how she was doing, and you know what? She's having a blast. Sure, she spent the first couple of days sitting quietly and observing, but since then she's immersed herself into her new home. Lucy has a huge amount of positive qualities - she's very calm and tame, she will go to anyone and allow you to pet and hold her. She's inquisitive, smart and content. Her new mom said she's a great bird, and they love her. Fantastic!

Here's a picture of my girl in her new home -

Her transition was pretty smooth....with her favorite toys in her cage, and instructions of how to play with her I think she just figured 'Well, I guess I'm with these people now. Let's play with my wiffle ball!'

As for our reduced flock, it turns out we're a two bird family...who knew?

As my mom said, just be glad I don't have real kids.