Yesterday late morning the power went out. Luckily, we had received a grant from petfinder to purchase a generator earlier this year, so the birds were not affected by this. (Yes, I did link petfinder to CARE's adoptable animals page; however, you can use this amazing website to find pretty much any kind of animal that needs a new home!)
However, with temps (including windchill) expected to get to around negative 20, we did not want to chance having the birds depending on a generator for heat overnight. Time to put our disaster preparedness plan into action!
Lori called about 10 of our volunteers, and every single one stepped up and agreed to take in some birds in temporary cages until power was restored. Sher and Lori spent the day making sure that each bird had a temporary cage or carrier set up with toys, so that if it became necessary to get birds to volunteers, they could quickly be placed in their temporary home, since light would be waning.
We had been told that if power wasn't restored by 3 pm Wednesday, it likely wouldn't be restored until noon on Thursday. A little after 3, Lori called the volunteers and asked them to come up to get their temporary houseguests. What a nice surprise when the power went back on around 3:15 pm! The volunteers were called and told they were not needed, but thanked profusely.
As always, Lori and Sher were so thankful for the amazing volunteers CARE has. As an all-volunteer organization, we depend on people giving their time to help the parrots, and we're lucky to have great, dedicated people willing to help with little notice.
Though we didn't end up having to displace any of the parrots, even temporarily, it was a great exercise showing the effectiveness of our disaster preparedness. Should there be a next time, things will go even more smoothly.
One thing we did realize is that we do not have enough carriers to transport all of the parrots in our care. This wouldn't have been an issue yesterday since volunteers were willing to use their carriers; however, if we needed to do a large-scale evacuation, those carriers would be in use with the volunteers' birds.
Lori will be adding this to our wish list, but we need more carriers, in all sizes, preferable collapsible so that they're not taking up too much room when not in use.
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