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I can’t believe it’s already been 5 years since this pretty but mean girl was surrendered. William Murderbeak is an interesting bird; she lays eggs, but she also crows and demonstrates many behaviors more typical of roosters, so I suspect there is something a little off-kilter hormonally. She will flog you like a rooster if you get in her space, and she can be a bully to other birds. Her previous owner brought her to my workplace and said she was a “devil bird” that killed two other hens, and that she would be dispatched if I didn’t take her. Because we had the accommodations for a gradual, highly monitored introduction to other chickens, we decided to give her a chance.

For the record, it is extremely manipulative and shitty to tell rescuers that you will kill or abandon an animal if they don’t take it, because at the end of the day, the animal is your responsibility, not theirs, and putting the onus of its fate on them is profoundly unfair. Rescue work is emotionally harrowing and the need is always greater than the resources at hand. To rescue responsibly, difficult decisions need to be made every day about what animals can and cannot be accepted. When rescuers lose sight of that and let only their desire to help guide their decision making, the situation tends to devolve into hoarding and neglect - an all too common outcome that isn’t talked about in-community nearly as much as it should be.

We already know that the animals we can’t help might suffer or die. We think about it all the time. We agonize over it. We rack our minds for how to make space for just one more, but unfortunately, “one more” is never just one. It is unending and relentless. And for some rescuers like myself, compassion fatigue brings us to a dangerous place where we need to stop rescuing entirely to recover and heal. It has been six years since we were last open to intakes, with very few exceptions made, William Murderbeak being one of them.

Pumping the brakes on active rescue allowed me the time and space to work closely with this bird to safely integrate her into a flock. It availed the resources to ensure that our chicken enclosure is spacious and filled with enrichment to reduce the likelihood of strained social dynamics in our birds. In William’s case, her previous environment (a small store-bought coop) likely had much to do with her aberrant behavior there, because chickens respond to crowded and low-enrichment environments with aggression, feather picking, and even cannibalism. Despite her surly baseline temperament, we have had no serious incidents between her and the other birds, and keep a watchful eye to ensure that never happens.

Having said that, when there aren’t good options for behaviorally complex animals that can cause harm to other pets or people, ACS is a proponent of behavioral euthanasia. If William Murderbeak proved totally unsuitable to house with other birds, we would have needed to assess her quality of life. Chickens are social animals with complex flock dynamics, and individuals that can’t function within that framework either live under constant stress within the flock as a risk to other birds, or need to be isolated, which takes a psychological toll on social species. Some chickens can bond closely with human caregivers, but because William is not a “people person,” she would have had no social outlet at all being separated from both birds and humans. We’re glad the “devil bird” calmed down some under different living conditions and can live out the remainder of her days here.

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A post came across my Facebook feed this morning from a page called Jim’s Place for Parrots about a macaw that tragically died shortly following anesthesia to remove a piece of hardware from a toy that had gotten stuck on its beak and could not be removed without putting the bird under. Birds are notoriously fragile under anesthesia, and I don’t fault the owner or vet in this situation, because it all boiled down to an unfortunate and unforeseen accident involving a toy, which is actually a fairly common source of injury and death in captive parrots.

The toymaker offered to pay the owner’s veterinary expenses and has already made a public statement about the incident, and are going to change the design of the toy to make it safer. Small scale parrot toy businesses are often owned by parrot lovers, and they are taking this situation seriously. Basically, there are no bad faith actors in this, however, it does present an opportunity to talk about toy safety, and the component in question that ultimately resulted in this bird’s death.

The piece of hardware you see in the third image is called a rope thimble. It is commonly used to hold the shape of a loop at the end of a rope or cable, as seen in the second image. Personally, I am not a fan of cable as a toy component because even if it is coated and stainless, if the coating is chewed off, a powerful bird like a macaw or cockatoo could do enough damage to fray it, and frayed cable is both extremely sharp and can shed small pieces that could cause internal injury. But cables are frequently used, so let’s talk about the hardware itself.

An open ended rope thimble like this, when pulled loose from a toy by a large parrot, is the perfect shape for disaster, as the opening is narrow enough to get caught on the beak. Its structure makes it difficult to bend outwards, especially if sturdy stainless hardware is being used, and depending on how much space there is to use tools, it would also be difficult to cut through. I can easily see why it would be virtually impossible to remove from a struggling, unanesthetized parrot. Given that even captive birds are vulnerable to exertional rhabdomyolysis (an often lethal metabolic acidosis resulting in widespread muscle necrosis) if they overexert themselves under stress, not anesthetizing also had significant risks.

Thankfully, fully closed rope thimbles do exist, in both stainless and nylon. These are less likely to get caught on the beak, especially the models with a smaller opening. Even those could potentially get stuck on the tip of the beak, but it would be both less likely and easier to remove. So, if you make parrot toys at home and will be employing a rope thimble, please use caution and select a fitting that poses the least risk of an unfortunate accident like this.

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