Today, I’m very sad to report that one of our wonderful budgies, Kiwi, passed away.

For around two weeks or so, he had not been eating right. We tried to find out what the problem was, as he wasn’t eating food out of his containers. He would frequently hop to the floor and forage for anything he could find. We tried to get Kiwi to eat out of another container, just in case the other birds were bullying him out of his normal routine. Little did we know that he was suffering from a liver problem and it did not manifest itself in his droppings until a couple of days ago.

When the eating problem first came about, I took him to an avian veterinarian. She took samples, ran tests and couldn’t find the problem. She did give us antibiotic and anti-parasitic treatment just in the case that there was some other problem undetectable. During a week long regimen, he seemed to be doing better and gaining a little weight back. Afterwards, things began to decline for little Kiwi. However, all the while that this was going on, he was bright and alert and very active, despite a fluffed up appearance.

I took Kiwi in again today to get blood tests (which I had declined the first time, a bad move in hindsight) and X-ray imaging to further find a cause. Leaving him in the good doctor’s care, I went to do some errands. Two hours later, I was notified that after the anesthesia (needed for a panicky bird) and during the blood draw, his heart gave out. They tried CPR revival, but it did no good. I rushed in to the office, talked to the vet and said my goodbyes to his tiny, lifeless body. Afterwards, a necropsy revealed a deteriorating liver, not to mention an enlarged adrenal gland due to all the stress. We’ll know more when the blood tests come back in a few days, as we don’t know yet if any of the other birds are going to be affected by whatever caused the liver problem.

Our little Kiwi had his own distinctive personality, as all our birds have. He was, as Christine had said, “his own bird”. This English budgerigar had the biggest Napoleon complex of the flock, often rearing his beak at any of the birds that felt like getting near him. However, he had a gentler side towards his buddy, Alex the cockatiel, and he even made friends with the newer budgerigar, Bailey. In fact, it seemed that all the birds, even Thommen (our Eclectus parrot), wanted to be near him. A year and a half ago, I actually was making a music video with footage of Kiwi with the theme being “Everybody Wants You”. Unfortunately, the project got shelved when I needed more clips, and it was lost in the FileVault meltdown that happened around that time, so I can’t show it now, much as I’d love to. So I’ll put some pictures from the photo gallery here for you all to see.

After clicking on a pic, hit ‘P’ for previous pic, ‘N’ for next pic and ‘C’ to close lightbox window

I’m planning to bury him in the sideyard of our home on Saturday. It just doesn’t seem right treating him any other way.

When we adopted him, he was meant to be a partner for our female budgie, Colby. She died some time ago. I would hope that his spirit is flying with hers now.

Rest in peace, our little Kiwi.

Update: It seems that the liver problem was a hereditary condition, so that can’t be communicable to the other birds. The rest of the blood panel is still pending for psittacosis.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under In Memory Of.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.