Captain Flint's Adventures

Captain Flint

Captain's an African Grey. She's sat right behind me at the moment, whilst I peruse the site. She seems to have 9 lives. We got her in february, and did the responsible thing after she flew top speed into a window & got her clipped by our local vet.

After that she used to come everywhere with us, to the local pet shops to say hello to everyone and down the pub during a quiet saturday afternoon, She didn't need a harness because she was clipped.

On Good Friday, me and hubby Stu were out in the garden chatting over the garden wall to our neighbours, a gust of wind caught her up the back side & off she flew into the fields behind our house.

After 6 hours of trawling through the fields & falling through hedges, we gave up. I called the police, the local radio & the RSPCA. We were both distraught (we don't have human kids!), we went up to our local pub, we were stopping people in the street, asking them to keep an eye out for him.

Stu's a Buddist, so when we came home we made an altar under Captain's cage. I don't think either of us got any sleep, we kept 'hearing' her.

At 8:30am the phone rang, it was our local police station saying that she had been found, they gave us a number of the people who had looked after her overnight (now normally we wouldn't dream of calling anyone before 9.00am on a Bank Holiday weekend, but hey, this was important.

We woke the person up on the end of the phone, "Yes, they did have an African Grey. No, it wasn't injured. Well, would you mind giving us a few minutes we've just woken up".

At 8:45am, we were hammering on the door, we were invited in and there, sat on a parrot cage was a miserable looking captain, she ran straight up Stu's arm and started telling him all about her adventure.

The gentleman who had taken her in, had been called by a neighbour, who had found Captain trying to dig her way into a wall in his garage.

The gentleman then told us, that he knew about parrots because he bred African Greys (how much luck does this bird have?) not only does he breed African Greys, but he has a company that some of you may have heard of..Avian Biotech (She really doesn't know how lucky she is!)

One of his first questions to us was "who clipped her wing?" "The vet" we said, "why?". "Because" he said, "she has been clipped completely wrong" The vet, who assured us she knew what she was doing, had clipped her secondary feathers, rather than her primaries.

It was a hard lesson to learn, but, we will never, take any of our birds to a non avian vet again.

Just one of the many sagas in Captain's life!

Sian & Captain

Member of Parrot Passions UK

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