Cracker 1999 - Oct 28, 2006
It was a pretty dismal weekend, Cracker had been a bit under the weather and Elena had taken him to the vet this past Thursday. They thought it was stress related or perhaps an infection. We had a bunch of meds for him, and although he was eating well, his energy level was still really low.
Saturday morning he was actually pretty perky, almost back to normal, I spent about 20 minutes with him just playing on the couch, but then he started to have trouble standing and moving. It was horrible on the way to the vet, he just sat in Elena’s hands, wings outstreached looking upwards a bit. At the vet they wanted to take X-Rays to see why the relapse was happening .. but when they took him back he started struggling and had “wet respiration” so they gave him some meds and stuck him in an oxygen tent to try and stablize him. That was pretty bad, he just crouched on the floor of the tent huffing. After a bit they thought they’d try the scan to see what was up, but then there was a problem and they ended up trying to give him cpr unfortunately it didn’t work and he passed away in front of us while they were working on him. Birdy CPR is really kinda disturbing, and especially bad when its your bird.
The necropsy showed that his heart was actually pretty odd, mis-sized, malformed and overly thick walls, add that to the infection (fluids in the abdomen and air sacs) and it was too much for him. The vet ended up diagnosing death due to heart disease.
Cracker was an awesome bird, he was the most cuddly and loving of the birds we have. We couldn’t believe that the original owners hadn’t wanted him, or that they thought he was boring. They fed him poorly, and told us that his genetics weren’t that great (especially the beak) and seemed to neglect him quite a bit. Still after we took him (about 2.5 years ago) he blossomed quickly. He basically became the sub-alpha bird (after me of course) in the house. He spent most of his time out of the cage and really hated it when we were in different rooms. Despite the rivalry with Gilbert, they always called and answered to each other. Lately we had let his wings grow out and he was flying around like a champ. Its just not the same around the house now, no happy greeting, no good night “tch tch tch” and especially no daily “broomstick attack”. I do have some other videos that I might put up on the gilbertgonzo site to go with his odd furby infatuation.