what is there to say at the end of a year like this one?

I'm glad the days are getting longer again, at least.
[ 31 December 2008]  ·  [ ]



bixbite update! this is overdue so I finally gave up on the idea that I'd have time to write out the whole rest of the saga. here's your quick and dirty video substitute:




a few additional notes:

1. the real triumph of the vet visit, aside from the four grams, was that bixbite's red blood cell count is back up to normal! it's very apparent in her behavior, too. she never would have been able to climb up on top of a cage last week.

2. when the vet clipped bix's toenail to draw blood for the test, bixbite reached down with her beak and very systematically shredded a strip of skin off the vet's thumb. I was both mortified and delighted (sick birds don't put up that much of a fight). the vet was bleeding all over the place and laughingly chided bixbite for trying to contaminate the sample.

3. we took another car service to the appointment. our driver was from senegal. he was very taken with bixbite and asked to see her multiple times when we were stopped at traffic lights. in French, he told her that she was a beautiful african bird and that he was from africa too.

4. after her good showing at the animal hospital, I decided bix could rough it like a normal city dweller and take the subway home. she was not amused. the trains must seem obscenely loud when you're not used to them. I rather enjoyed walking past the sidewalk christmas trees and the giant wreaths on bloomingdale's with a little blanket-wrapped bird slung over my arm.

5. this video has the least flattering screencap yet. why do they always end up that way? also, I need to stop telling my pets to say hello to the computer. I sound like a broken record. (is there a modern-day equivalent for that phrase? digital audio doesn't skip unless you tell it to.)
[ 19 December 2008]  ·  [ ]



I left school early on monday so I could take bixbite to the vet. we took a thirty-dollar car service ride over the brooklyn bridge and up fdr drive, to one of new york city's fancypants animal hospitals. (if you want a real avian specialist, it's sort of hard to avoid the fancypants route.) I said, "lovebird, no energy or appetite" and they whisked us in for an emergency appointment. bix was so exhausted that she didn't even move her little feet when the technician picked her up to put her in the scale. they just dangled, tiny toes curled under, like the feet of dead, featherless ducks in chinatown windows.

bixbite weighed 26 grams. less than an ounce, or as much as a single steel-tip dart. she had some internal bleeding in her intestinal tract. the tech took her away for an x-ray and blood tests, but before too long the head of avian medicine came back in to tell me that bixbite was too anemic for the tests to be done safely. "her hematocrit is less than ten. that's... almost incompatible with life. I'm surprised she's even standing." so I agreed to have her admitted to the intensive care unit, at a rate of one hundred thirty five dollars per day, not including the actual medicine. I signed a release form saying I knew my pet had a good chance of dying and that I didn't want any extreme measures taken to keep her alive. (you can't really do cpr on a bird anyway.) I told the doctor that I didn't need to be called right away if it happened in the middle of the night. it could wait until morning.

after I left, thinking I had just agreed to spend hundreds of dollars so that someone else could watch my bird die, I took the train back to brooklyn and wandered around greenpoint until my own toes were too cold to move.

as it turned out, though, I was spending tens of hundreds of dollars so that someone else could save my bird's life. bixbite, it seems, is worth more than forty dollars per gram. some people pay over twice that much for pure cocaine, so I guess I can't complain about how crazy expensive bix has become for something that fits in a pocket or a palm. she stayed in the incubator for 48 hours, getting twice-daily drugs and tube feedings to help bring her weight back up. the doctors called me after each feed to report that she was looking perkier -- "she even got a little feisty when I gave her the last syringe!" one vet said proudly -- and ultimately, despite the cause of her illness remaining a mystery, decided she could come back home.

I picked her up along with three small vials of medicine and the world's smallest syringes -- she gets 0.02 ml of three different drugs, to help her fight infection and to stave off any more internal bleeding. the total volume of all the medicine she will take over the next week is barely enough to fill a thimble. when the technician brought her out in her carrier, she was sitting on her perch, peering around with bright, wide eyes, looking both utterly adorable and nothing at all like the sick, spent bird I had brought in two days earlier. I should have known better than to think that anything about bixbite was incompatible with life. after all, this is a bird who was born crippled and survived a motherless infancy.

she's not all better, not by a long shot. she's still seriously underweight and has to work hard to climb around her cage. it seems like she's having trouble keeping her body temperature up, so I rigged a desk lamp and a pink light bulb into a little heater for her. she's way more tame and easy to handle than she would be if she were feeling like herself; even the most personable birds don't like having strange substances forcibly squirted into their mouths, but bix barely tries to resist.

still, it's heartening to see her sitting on her favorite perch again, playing with an empty seed hull or gobbling up her dried peas and corn. she looks worn out but optimistic. I'm trying to do my part by believing in her. my scrappy, stubborn little refusing-to-die bird. thanks for all your thoughts and good wishes -- we both appreciate it.
[ 10 December 2008]  ·  [ ]