Scare with Digby

Digby decided to scare me today.

I had her in the kitchen with me as I often do, and she was sitting on her perch, watching me and trying to hop onto me if I got to close. This is what she always does. I let her on my shoulder for a few minutes, then put her back on her perch.

She was not content to sit on her perch. She decided she needed to fly across the kitchen. Her wings are clipped, but I'm letting them grow out a little bit (the people who clipped them butchered her right wing). She didn't get much height, but she got a fair amount of distance. When she landed, I walked to her to pick her up and one of the feathers on her right wing was sticking out at a 90 degree angle from her wing. I put her on her perch and before I could inspect it, she smoothed it back down.

After a few minutes, she took off from her perch again, landing in the same spot. This time, the feather broke off and landed on the floor. I picked up her and the feather. The feather had a drop of blood on it! I put her on her perch and went to grab her towel. With my mom's help, I inspected the wing as best I could. Neither I nor my mom saw any blood on her wing, and she wouldn't let us look very much. She hates being toweled (which is really funny because she used to actually like it!) and wouldn't hold still.

Because I didn't see blood anywhere on her and couldn't find the remains of the broken feather, I decided to just keep an eye on her. Fortunately, she never bled and this evening she is being as active as ever.

Upon closer inspection of the feather, it was the one flight feather on that wing that had grown very much. Her left wing flight feathers are actually getting a bit long, but her right wing flight feathers are very, very short. I don't plan on letting her be flighted because our house isn't a safe place for a flighted bird, but I do want her to have feathers on her wings that don't look chopped up.

When this happened, I managed not to panic. I very calmly had her step up from her perch, very calmly walked upstairs, very calmly toweled her. When she tried to bite me, I remained calm. I am very proud to say I didn't panic. Sometimes I panic when things like that happen, but I stayed calm. (Side note: I believe retraining an ex-racehorse has a lot to do with my being able to stay calm. If he freaks, then I panic, then he panics too, but if he freaks and I stay calm, I am able to ride through whatever he does and calm him down as well.)