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Guppy, our new Quaker Parrot

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Please welcome the newest addition to the fur and feathered family of Mel & Shawn: Guppy.

Guppy came to us via a lady, whom I have never met nor do I know her name.  She contacted my husband’s sister, Kim, who works at a pet store trying to find a good home for him. She said that she simply didn’t have time to spend with Guppy and could no longer look after him. Her two dogs, however, were apparently far easier to look after than a quaker parrot.

We were told via Kim, from the lady who previously owned Guppy that he was a sweet bird if but a little bitey. She said that Guppy came to her from someone else when he was roughly a year old and that she’s kept him maybe 3-4 years, making Guppy probably four or five years old. This lady also said that she had trained him to step up onto a perch. She was reluctant to give up his cage and toys too and only wished to give away the bird, but Kim put her foot down and simply told her that if she wasn’t willing to bring the cage then Kim wasn’t willing to take the bird.

It took her nearly two weeks to finally decide that she was going to bring Guppy in.

On Friday, September 5th, The Guppinator finally made his confused and frightened way to his forever-home with us. On a torn out loose-leaf piece of paper was a small list of things she wrote down that Guppy could say. She estimated that his vocabulary consisted of: Hello, Guppy! I love you! Here Kitty! Guppy’s Momma’s naughty boy! and one or two more small phrases.

So to cap that off she said Guppy was: trained to step up, a little bitey, and said a small bit of things.

We’ve had Guppy for four days, I can tell you without a doubt that this bird has not been handled in a very long time and that he has never stepped up onto a perch nor been trained to. Guppy is deathly afraid of his own perches, has put, to date, 13 now-scabbing-over holes in my fingers from biting, and is extremely aggressive with and about his cage.

He can say, “Guppy’s a good boy!,” and within two days has already clearly said and picked up my, “Up, up?” from trying to get him to step up, as well as “Ow!” when I won’t remove my finger even if it’s bleeding and push back, mimicked the camera shutter not four minutes after hearing it, picked up Shawn’s father’s smoker’s cough, picked up laughing, plays Peekaboo, and has been out of his cage twice.

The latter bit of info about him being out of his cage is important. I have been marginally upset by Guppy’s behavior because for me, everything about it screams neglect and perhaps even, abuse–probably the not on purpose kind of abuse either. I am very sure it’s the I-don’t-know-a-damn-thing-about-birds kind of misinformation and handling which have ingrained Guppy with some extremely negative behaviors; there’s a band of feathers missing from around his neck, healed, which tells me he at one point was plucking due to stress and neglect as well. Back to the part about her saying he was trained to step up onto a perch?

I called bullshit and told everyone this. Kim apparently confronted the lady who called Sunday night to see how Guppy was doing–she told her that we didn’t think he was handled at all. She confessed that Guppy hadn’t been out of his cage in two years.

Seriously, is it any wonder this bird is a handful?

Now he’s ours and I am happy that he is. Four years of mistreatment will take a long time to ease and it may never truly go away. Guppy may forever be a little bitey, or he may never truly trust humans because of his passing from owner to owner–but he is here now and I will do my damnedest to make sure he understands that no one will hurt him here ever again. No one will keep him locked away in his cage to become a pretty display piece. No one will hit or scream at him.

It blows my mind how seriously uninformed some people are when it comes to birds as well as pets in general. Seriously, all it takes is a single Google search to start you in on the path to everything you and your pet needs to ensure a happy, healthy relationship…Or even finding out if you two are made for one another.

Save yourself the holes in your fingers I am sporting right now, the bruises behind the scabs, and the heart break. Research your pet choices. Ask someone who owns the same animal you are looking into, read, know. There aren’t any excuses in this day and information age for ignorance.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”
–Mahatma Gandhi