Introducing Charlie

Anyone who's visited CARE in the past 7 months may recognize Charlie, a beautiful female blue-and-gold macaw, pictured here. Note this is not the same Charlie who spent much of 2004-2005 with us before finding a wonderful home and who will still occasionally accompany CARE on educational outings. This Charlie's story is much more tragic.Before she was surrendered here, she was living in an attic. Not surprisingly, she was in a too-small cage, had no toys, and fed an inadequate diet.

We noticed there was something wrong with her almost immediately -- she couldn't put any weight on. As always, we vetted her right away and found that she had symptoms of aspergillosis plus she had something in her ventriculus. We did a barium series and the barium wouldn't move through, which meant surgery. As you probably know, surgery is extremely risky in birds and we weren't sure whether she'd make it through the anesthesia.

She had her surgery and our vet found lots of pieces of food impacted in her ventriculus. Our amazing vet removed it all and stitched Charlie back up. She then was put on antibiotics for one month and anti-fungals for two months.

Her weight continued to decline. It was very noticeable just looking at her; her keel was razor-sharp and protruded. We did everything we could to fatten her up. She went through a period of gaining weight, only to lose it shortly after.

Once she was off all of the medications, she started to gain some weight back. However, she still didn't appear completely healthy. It was time for her recheck anyway, so we returned to the vet with the feeling that something was still not quite right.

Our vet scoped her and found that her air sacs are very badly scarred, probably due to living in a home with smokers. There is nothing that can be done about this; we just have to make sure she goes to a completely non-smoking home. Everything else looked good and she has been released from vet care and is ready to go to her new home.

She may always be on the thin side, but the most important thing for her is "absolutely no cigarette smoke." Even better would be a home with an air cleaner and without dusty birds (cockatoos, greys, etc.)

It's sad that she's had to go through what she's gone through because someone didn't know enough to keep her out of an attic (basements too) and smoked around her. We know how bad smoking is for humans, can you imagine what it does to a bird's air sacs and lungs? There's truth in the phrase "canary in a coal mine."

Finally, though, after six months of two surgeries and medications, we can find Charlie a good home. If you think that might be you, please stop by to meet her!