Dear You,
Before I say anything else, I want to say that I came here to start a blog, but I discovered I had already created one in August of 2015. It had no posts, but it did have a title: pleasethankyouandscrewyou. I have no idea what was on my mind when I made that, but I clearly didn’t feel passionate enough about it to pursue it.
Now, to get to the actual context. I live with two dragons. Well, they’re really velociraptors. OK, well, they’re actually parrots — greenwing macaws, if you want to be picky about it — but trust me when I say they are both draconic and prehistoric in origin. Can a creature be a dragon AND a dinosaur? Why not? We’ll go with yes, since my little monsters seem to be living proof. I suppose that brings me to…
These rascals. Adorable, aren’t they? Awwww… NO. NO, THEY ARE NOT ADORABLE. THIS IS A TRAP LAID BY THE MOST CLEVER OF SENTIENT BEINGS. DO NOT FALL FOR IT. Yes, they may look sweet and oh so snuggly, but try to touch them and risk losing a finger. “Why on Earth do you have them if they are that aggressive?!” you ask. Why indeed.
…
Oh, right, sorry, I’ll tell you. I adopted them in January of this year. I volunteer at an exotic wildlife sanctuary (mostly parrots, but there are some other lovely creatures there, too.) After volunteering there for almost a year, I decided the time had come to adopt some parrots of my own. Greenwing macaws Isaac and Hayes had been sanctuary residents for about 12 years. They have always been beloved by those who have known them, despite them being snarky little jerks. I think this is due to their surprisingly high charisma and desire to interact with people…as long as you didn’t touch them. See, they are currently 25 years old and have never been handled, except in emergencies (for medical reasons, etc, when we have to use a towel to catch them, blah blah blah I’ll get into that later.) “What?! Never been handled in 25 years?!” Yes, calm down, you’ll be OK.
The first 12ish years of their life were spent without physical contact from humans. They were not in an abusive situation, they just didn’t have human contact. They were part of a clutch of six and bonded with each other. When birds come to the sanctuary and are not human-bonded, we do not try to force them to bond with humans, especially if they are already bonded with another bird or birds. We like our parrots wild and free, but since setting captive parrots free would essentially be a death sentence for them, we do what we can to make them feel as close to wild and free as possible while still living in captivity (open frames, large aviaries with outdoor access, minimal human contact unless they need it or request it — yes, parrots can request things. They also demand things. A lot. They mostly demand things.) They also get a constant supply of things to destroy (including their frames and perches — as I write this, Hayes is gleefully chewing through a very expensive rope net that I got to keep her from hitting the floor when she falls — another thing I will get into later) and a healthy varied diet of nutrient-rich pellets, a couple of nuts as treats, and delicious, freshly-made salad. (For those of you who are unaware, YES, PARROTS NEED FRESH SALAD IN THEIR DIET!) Right, back to the Dragons. So they came to the sanctuary and didn’t want humans to touch them, so they didn’t unless it was absolutely necessary. I know your next question:
“Why did they let you adopt them if they had been sanctuary residents for 12 years?!” You seem very agitated by all of this, try taking a deep breath. I’ll wait.
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Better? OK, good. Here’s how it went down. First of all, the sanctuary does not make a habit of letting people, even volunteers, adopt sanctuary residents. They have a wonderful adoption program, and birds are evaluated individually as they come in to see whether they would be happier in a home environment or in a sanctuary environment. Isaac and Hayes were thriving in the sanctuary environment, EXCEPT that Isaac has asthma. “Birds can–” YES. BIRDS CAN HAVE ASTHMA. HUSH. As the sanctuary acquired more birds, the dander from everyone else began to be too much for him and his condition worsened over time. He was having asthma attacks upwards of three times a week and they lasted for hours at a time. They needed to get him to a place where the air was cleaner. (It isn’t actually that bad, as the entire building is thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom every single day, but for a bird with asthma, it was bad. Especially with all the cockatoos and cockatiels, who are all “powder-down” birds.)
Cue me and my weird-ass timing.
I was in the office of the head of adoption at the time (we will call this person X.) Isaac and Hayes had been temporarily moved to a large hanging frame in there, away from the general population, in an attempt to keep Isaac away from some of the dust. I went in there to talk to X about potentially adopting a small cockatoo that was arriving soon. While we were talking, Isaac and Hayes kept interrupting our conversation with their strange little noises. X paused, looked at them, looked back at me, looked back at them, looked back at me, looked back at them…eventually, X said, “you know, these guys need a home,” and pointed to Isaac and Hayes on the frame. “These guys?!” I replied, astonished that X would suggest that pairing. Not having planned on adopting anything larger than an amazon (as I said, the cockatoo I was curious about was small), I was not sure at first. My tune quickly changed, however, as I already knew and loved them. Plus, they needed a safe space with clean air, and I had a freshly prepared, sparkling clean aviary for them (OK, that’s an exaggeration, I still had to do a lot of prep work very quickly before they arrived, but I still had the space for them.) I was originally planning on steering clear of the louder, more aggressive, more destructive species, specifically for those reasons, and then I found myself so excited to bring these knuckleheads home…the largest, loudest, angriest, most destructive parrots I have ever met. OK, second largest. Hyacinth macaws are the largest.
It was not, and still is not lost on me that the sanctuary trusted me with two of their longest, most beloved residents. There was another potential home option for them, but I could not bear the thought of them leaving the sanctuary family, and my heart leaped into action faster than I could. And now I have two beautiful, magnificent, brilliant (with some exceptions), charismatic macaws…that I cannot touch. I can’t lie, I wanted a bird I could touch, but these two picked me. They literally interrupted a conversation to say, “ahem, yes, excuse me, X, yes, this human seems like a suitable sucker, we would like this one, please.” Also, my special “thing” that I do at the sanctuary is sing to the birds, and these two love love LOVE to be entertained. That, to them, is interaction at its finest. “ENTERTAIN US, PEASANT!” “Yes, your majesties,” I’ll say as I put on the soundtrack to “Hello, Dolly.”
And here we are, a happy, screaming (much to the chagrin of Loki, my incredibly sweet, 14-year-old miniature poodle), biting, squawking, destruction-seeking family. Also bleeding. They do the biting, I do the bleeding. And that brings us HERE, to this very blog, where you are somehow still reading this long-winded piece of writing. I am not entirely sure what EXACTLY this blog will be about, but I know it will be about life with my Velocidragons. There is a lot more that I will need to tell you before I can talk about other things, but this…this is more than enough for now.
Thank you for joining me on this adventure.
I love you all so very, very much.
Love,
Julian
The Velociraptor Diaries 