by R C McDonald

There I was, peacefully minding my own business, relaxing after a long, hard day. I should have been in bed, but I was feeling too comfortable to move. Slowly I became aware that I had been hearing a rather odd sound for some time now.

"Bonk!" It was a soft, semi-muffled sort of noise. About thirty seconds later, there it was again. "Bonk!"

"What on earth?!" I muttered to myself, and began to consider investigating. "Bonk!"

As I reached the tempered glass door in the corner by the canary flights, I heard it again. "Bonk!"

I reached to flip on the porch light. My hand froze, still on the light switch as I stared, suddenly very much awake indeed. Beside me the canaries, wakened suddenly from their sleep, reacted much faster.

There on the railing, outlined clearly in the porch light, stood one of their most ancient enemies; an owl. He wore an eager, almost gleeful, expression. His big golden eyes were fixed voraciously on that cage full of canaries, and if he could, he'd have been drooling.

It took the canaries no more than a fraction of a second to react to this sight. They, who are usually so bold and brassy, reacted with instant and utter terror. In the split second after registering his presence, their cage was full of whirling feathered bodies, blindly bouncing off the wire mesh in their instinctive, frantic attempts to escape.

"Aaagghhh!", I cried, "Shoo!" and waved my arms, in an attempt to get the canaries' attention and move the owl, both at the same instant, of course! He ignored me, as did the canaries. They have their priorities!

Beautiful as that owl was, he had lots to hunt in the area. I knew for a fact the vacant lot next door was heavily populated with field mice - I'd had enough battles with them over the past year. I waved my arms again, wondering if he'd even noticed me.

He had. His head turned slightly to follow the motion, then his gaze returned to the canaries. He had no intentions of leaving without one of those little lovelies in his talons, and he leaned forward and tried to fly through the glass door. "Bonk!" I heard again, as his thickly feathered (and luckily for him, apparently heavily boned) skull came into contact with the glass door.

"Oh yeah? Not with my canaries, you don't!" I muttered, and grabbed my coat. I was going to have to convince this critter to leave before one of my birds hurt itself!

As I stepped out of the door he flew off, and I quickly turned back to the canaries. Too late! One of my 3/4 dark rose-bronze hens was hanging upside down, her leg caught in the wire. The rest of the birds had stopped their panicked attempts to escape as soon as the owl had flown off. I reached into the flight and gently disentangled her while the rest of the flock watched.

Her leg dangled loosely as she struggled in my grasp. The long bone above the foot had been completely shattered. She was bleeding heavily and I grasped her leg at the break and applied pressure to try and stop the flow. I must have hurt her fiercely, for she resumed struggling.

"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry," I murmured brokenly, and stroked her throat. "What on earth are we going to do?"

She stopped her struggles as if in response to my apology and lay gazing quietly at me while my brain raced. It was well after hours for any of the local bird vets; it was freezing out, and of course the car had recently broken down, so I didn't even have that.

As if this was not enough, my attempts to stop the bleeding were not having much success - the instant I let go she began bleeding profusely. If I let go of that leg for more than a second or two, she was going to bleed to death. That meant that I had only one hand free to use.

She struggled when I shifted my grip, and I knew that I must be hurting her terribly. I looked a little more closely at the leg. It was completely shattered, not just snapped; it would be next to impossible to mend a fracture like this cleanly, due to the damage to the tissue and nerves, and the multiple pieces of fractured bone.

A protruding piece of the broken bone had snagged on the wire of the cage when she'd broken it; her whole weight had been suspended on the injury as she struggled to get free, and her desperate actions had effectively finished any chance there may originally have been of mending the fracture. The foot dangled loosely even when she was struggling, and I knew that lack of adequate blood circulation could mean gangrene.

Even if by some miracle it was possible to splint and heal the leg it would be another miracle if she ever again had the use of it. I knew with a sinking feeling what I had to do.

Luckily for me, I had the perfect tool available. It was a pair of Japanese bonsai scissors, made of the same tempered steel as those famous swords. I kept them clean and razor sharp. I placed them in a clean bowl and poured rubbing alcohol over them to disinfect them, then left them to sit in the liquid while I worked, one handed, at setting up the hospital cage.

I thanked heaven and all the angels that I always cleaned it after each use. A folded towel was tossed in the oven (set at 200* F) to warm while I filled water and seed cups. A tablet containing vitamins and general antibiotics was set to dissolve in an electrolyte solution in the water cup, and a heating pad set on low was placed under 1/2 the cage so that there would be a range of temperatures available to her, at her whim.

A small dish was filled with chopped kale and grated carrots from the fridge's supply (prepared for the next morning), and placed at the cooler end of the hospital cage. I grabbed the towel out of the oven and arranged it on the floor of the cage. There could be no perches at first, so I covered the towel with a thick layer of paper towels and taped everything firmly so nothing could slip

Another paper towel dried the scissors, and I set the end of the blades on one of the stove's electric elements to heat. If I could even partially cauterize the wound amputating her leg, it would heal more cleanly and bleed less.

This all done, I paused to stroke her again. She had lain quietly in my hand through all this frantic activity, turning her head alertly to follow all the movements, but making no protest. I explained what I was going to do to her and why it had to be done, as much to keep it clear in my mind what I had to do and in what order as to comfort her, I think, but she appeared to listen to me.

She appeared alert and clear-eyed, and I marvelled at her bravery. She was absolutely the calmer of the two of us. My heart was racing, and my nerves were on fire. I struggled to apply the breathing techniques I'd learned during Tai Chi, knowing that I needed to be focused.

The scissors were getting hot enough that it was difficult to hold them, and I knew it was time. I looked again at the little bird I had named Peggy Sue for the way she sang, and lightly stroked her head.

"It's time, little girl," I muttered. She looked directly back at me and calmly and deliberately she held out her leg. The look in her eyes seemed to say "Go ahead then, get it over with."

I blinked at her in surpise and she cheeped softly back. I gave my head a quick shake - focus! - and picked up the scissors.

That amazing little bird held her leg straight out and watched while I cut it off just above where it had shattered. She did not flinch or jerk in any way at any time, from start to end. In fact, she heaved a huge sigh as that poor, battered, by-now-almost-purple limb fell away from her leg.

From there the worst was over. She lay on her back in my hand and cooperated in holding her leg up so it was higher than the rest of her anatomy until the bleeding stopped completely. Other than dusting it lightly with an organic-source white flour to speed clotting, I left it alone. There is a fine balance of beneficial organisms on a bird's skin that help to prevent infection and speed healing, and the application of liquids and/or disinfectants can disturb this balance and disrupt healing.

It was almost a half an hour later before I was sure that the wound had scabbed over completely and that the bleeding had entirely stopped. A canary will not allow a dressing on any part of its body that can be reached with the beak, so I did not try to cover the wound. Besides, air circulation is essential to prevent infection in a deep cut. Tiny though that leg was, I had to consider the wound deep!

I stroked her head one more time as I placed her gently on the by-now thoroughly warm cloth-and-paper-towels arrangement. I knew from experience that the temperature would be a cosy eighty-five degrees or so. She sat watching while I closed the door to the cage, then gave a little shake and began to preen.

This is a very good sign in a sick or stressed bird, and my heart leaped into my mouth. She had just announced that she was still interested in living! I gazed down at her in admiration. After everything this brave little bird had just lived through, she was worried about her feathers!

Quietly, I tiptoed away to the other end of the room and collapsed into a chair. As it began to sink in what I'd just done, my hands began to shake. My mouth dried in panic at the thought of how many things could've gone wrong, and what still could.

In the end, it took me almost three hours to stop shaking. If somebody had told me the previous day how I would end the next, I would have guffawed in disbelief.

In the meantime, that owl had taught me a lesson. A cover was added around the outside of the top quarter of the cage, so the birds could not see outside when they were on their roosting perches. More importantly, they could not be seen from outside the house, either. I wanted no repeat visitations!

As the days passed, Peggy made it plain that she was going to be just fine. She was eating and drinking within an hour of first being placed in the hospital cage. Her appetite never showed any signs of failing, and her feathers never lost their gloss.

The wound was healing cleanly, and did not bleed at all, other than once about three days later, when she managed to make a bathtub out of her water dish. Even then, it was only a little bit, and it stopped quickly.

As she got more active, she began to fly about and attempt to find a perch higher in the cage. I wanted her to have some time to adapt to using her stump on regular perches, so I made her a little platform to rest on.

It was simple enough to make - a smooth slab of 1"x4", cut 3" long and sanded smooth. A small pair of braces to make sure it hung level, as if it were a miniature shelf, and a pair of bent nails to make hooks so the platform could hang on the side of the cage.

She bounced up and onto it the instant I removed my hand from the cage, and gazed about herself with apparent satisfaction.

"Some sick little bird you are!" I told her, and she tossed her head and preened a little. Whoever said birds are dumb certainly never had a canary like Peggy!

I kept her on vitamin/antibiotic tablets (the ones made by Mardel Laboratories) dissolved in electrolyte solution for 10 days, then switched her back to plain water. For the next ten days I sprinkled her greens-&-veg mix with Prime, (a powdered vitamin/mineral supplement made by Hagan) which also contains digestive enzymes and bacteria, known collectively as 'probiotics'.

Antibiotics destroy probiotics as well as other disease-causing organisms, and it is very important to replace the probiotics in the body after using antibiotic medications. (Don't do this during treatment, or you could reduce the efficiency of the medications). Lack of these beneficials in a digestive system can cause no end of troubles, both immediately or down the line, due to improper digestion of nutrients.

By three months later, Peggy Sue was once again the healthy, active little bird she had been before. She used her stump for balance, and seemed to find it good for scratching with. She held it up out of the way of her wings and good foot when flying or hopping about, and you had to look hard to see anything unusual about her.

A canary hen will quite happily accept a human as a member of her flock, and Peggy quickly became quite tame. I had not planned to sell her, but when a visiting family fell in love with her, and she seemed to like them in return, I decided maybe it she would be better off with them.

They were a family of five, and were all experienced with birds. The children were 8, 10, and 11, and kept pet finches, some of which they had tamed. The family also had two male canaries, each of which lived in a separate cage, but who tended to have the run of the place when the family was home. Even better, both parents had quite a lot of experience with helping to rehabilitate abused parrots, and had also spent time working with the local wild bird rescue organizations.

Peggy would have first class accomodations of her own, great care, and plenty of time to interact with her family - what more could anybody want in a perfect bird home? I bowed to the inevitable, and demanded occasional reports on her in return.

We grew to be good friends, and I thought it quite funny that even as she aged, Peggy remained, as she had quickly become, the boss of their household.

In her own tradition, she established her routine, and kept to it. She teased the children, bossed all the other birds, stole salad and peas from dinner plates, and incited the family's pet male canaries to more song by trying to outsing them.

Recently I received another update from Peggy's family, but this time the news was neither happy nor funny, as was more usual.

Peggy had shown no outward signs of aging, except perhaps a slight bit more greyness to her feathers the last couple of years, and the fact that she had lately taken to sleeping on her platform instead of on the perch. One night shortly after New Year's, she simply went to sleep, and never woke up again. She was not quite nine years old.

While we all miss her, we all agree that we are proud to have known her - she was our one, our only, our pretty, pretty little Peggy Sue.

by R C McDonald
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Copyright © Mar 2002.
All rights reserved.