Duration: 4:01

176 views

6

7/14/2015 My big red buddy, he was 10 years older than me and was beautiful on the inside as much as he was on the outside. I rescued him from a shelter of all places. It was a shelter made up of private homes and the person in charge had a disgusting, horrible hoarding/neglect situation. He tortured this poor animal, put him in a cage so small he couldn't open his wings, it was plastered top to bottom with shit, the one perch was wobbly and he clung to his food bowl, his nails were overgrown and it made it hard to stand. He would escape and let other birds out of their cages. He wasn't fed and his body was wasting away. His cage was wrapped all around with chains because he escaped. His water bowl always looked like it was full of diarrhea. It took me almost a year to gather pictures, video, and make a report to the state. I paid the man a lot of money to sign over ownership of this bird. I did everything I could and gave him a good life. Today he passed away. I hope that people will learn to speak up when they see animal abuse. I hope people will learn about how intelligent these animals are and how wrong it is to treat them badly.

Despite being physically violently abused, despite being wild in nature and having known so much cruelty from people, he was special because he was still open to human kindness. It will always stay with me in my heart and make me question the things that are supposed to make us human. He was smart and he said things that echoed years back to when he was hurt. He started saying things that were nice and sweet, things I said to him. He was blind in one eye and started going blind in the other, which could have been caused by a combination of being hit and malnourished. I took him to eye doctors to try and get his sight fixed. I did the best I could for him, dedicated more of myself than I thought I was made of. He was so special to me. When you hear stories like that it's usually about dogs; an animal bred to seek human companionship. He was a wild parrot, and I know part of why people were so horrible to him was because it's difficult to keep these animals in our homes. I hope his life can teach people something but regardless I will be lucky to have known, to love, and to have been loved by such a beautiful creature.