On Thursday, I wrote about Digby breaking a flight feather that had blood on the broken end (see this post). What little bleeding there was stopped before I found it. I did not have to pull out the rest of the feather or take her to the vet. I was quite relieved that the broken feather was nothing serious.

But today's story is different. I got Digby out, planning on letting her be out for a while. I had her on her perch in the kitchen while I finished up a few chores. Something spooked her and she flew to the ground. When she landed, I saw she had a broken feather. The feather did not just break off. It broke but was still attached.

 I picked her up and put her back on her perch. I watched her for a few minutes and the feather seemed to be really bothering her. Then she lifted her wing trying to mess with it and I saw blood on the inside of her wing. I took her upstairs so my mom could help me. I put her on the bed and we observed her for a couple minutes. I tried toweling her to inspect her wing, but each time I did, she got very upset. After a couple minutes, I gave her some bird bread to calm her down. She happily ate while we decided what to do.

There aren't very many avian vets in Louisville, and none of them are open on Sunday evening. We do have an emergency vet, Jefferson Animal Hospital, but I am unsure of what they could do. I talked to them once that night Noey died; at the time, they told me all they would be able to do was stabilize her until their other branch that deals with exotics opened in the morning. I am fairly sure that they could have helped us tonight had we needed it. Even though we could have gone to the vet, we decided to pluck the feather ourselves.

We had never done it before, but both my mom and I have read about it in several different places. So Mom got out a small pair of needle nose pliers to do it with. I held Digby in a towel, while Mom held Digby's wing and pulled the feather out (no way was I about to be the one to pull the feather out...it was nerve-racking enough watching somebody else do it). Mom very carefully got a hold of the feather's shaft and pulled. It came out and the bleeding stopped. Digby ran up my arm to my shoulder and sat for a while.

The feather. Notice the break and the blood.

I am very, very thankful my girl is okay. I was prepared to take her to the vet if I needed to, but I feel this is one of those things you need to be able to do if you have birds. The most difficult part of it was not the actual pulling the feather out, but restraining Digby long enough to do so.

Digby is now doing fine. She has already gone to bed for the evening after some cuddling and eating some more bird bread.

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.)