Friday morning, Blake lusted after a dish towel and bit RDC, and RDC snapped his wrist to unlatch the closed beak from his flesh, thereby launching Blake into the refrigerator door. Blake held his beak open in that way he does when he's scared and that I think I remember from the few times he's been hurt, and we palpitated his keel bone and gauged his feet's grip on a finger, and he could spread his wings and bow his head for his neck to be scratched, so I left.
After I left, Blake sang into the hand and chattered for a while but then to RDC seemed lethargic, so he brought him to the vet. No blood in the eye or ear: no head trauma. Nothing broken. Yet he wasn't himself, not talking to the other birds in earshot at the hospital, but the vet said that was a reasonable reaction to the scare and pain and possible minor soft-tissue injury.
The vet, not his usual doctor but an avian-certified one in the same practice whom they both liked, suggested that his accompanying us everywhere (in the house), as we like because of our profound attachment and love for the buddy, is not always in the bird's best interest if it means we take him for granted (allowing him free rein on the floor, allowing him free reign over our lives), especially during his semi-annual hormonal surges.
A friend told RDC later that his shake was an instinctual reaction to pain. RDC knew very well, so I didn't make him feel worse by suggesting, that you simply must not react instinctually in certain situations. A hollow-boned creature 0.002% of your size, however powerful his beak, need not be flung, any more than a teething baby need be flung if she nips the breast.
Injury he might have sustained, if any, might be worse than otherwise because the buddy is closing that size gap:
Blake currently weighs one hundred and one grams.
That's up from 93 grams this fall and 94 grams fall before last. In his first year, before he was full grown, he was in the 80s. His silhouette is a 4 (I am not sure of the scale: I expect 3 is normal and 1 is starving). So Blake is on a diet, and we must exercise him more.
More meaning at all; right now he walks around a lot and exercises our patience and that's about it. He hates to bicycle (revolving index fingers into an endless step-up loop), but bicycling there will be, and more important than muscular drumsticks is muscular wings, of course. So we must flap him.
This happened yesterday. Today for breakfast I gave Blake only pellets instead of mixed pellets and seeds. He didn't notice at first, eating some raw baby spinach and a piece of whole-grain cereal and some corn from his buddy chow while on the kitchen windowsill. A bit later as I sat at the dining table typing this and eating my cereal, Blake left the top of his cage (with spinach, cereal, and chow) for the pellet dish in the cage door (which is propped open with a porch attachment). He began looking for seeds, shoveling with his beak and rifling back and forth, like Keehar ripping into the rotten log looking for insects, except he found neither insects nor seeds. He climbed back to the top of the cage and ate a piece of corn. I wonder which of us will break first.
Right now he is on my lap and preening. He doesn't need the excessive scoopage he did yesterday, and he is his usual chipper self. I am really hoping he wants a shower today, because he smells funny: other people's hands, or latex gloves, or his plumage absorbs odors rapidly. He smells kind of doggy, not his usual yummy dusty popcorniness.
Also, adminstering .03 cc of anti-inflammatory to a cockatiel whose grandparent was a squid and other great-grandparent was a soap bubble is not easy. Aha, and it is the anti-inflammatory that smells like rank doggy ass.
Cybex arc trainer, 30' @ 100% incline and 51% resistance; this machine doesn't total your strides (that I can figure out) but I ranged from 94 to 107; and it reported 474 calories, which I doubt. I doubt the Precor count as well but I figure it's comparable from one exertion to the next.
Then weights: 3x12 leg press @ 70 and 1x12 @ 80; 3x12 chest press @ 20 and 1x12 @25; 3x12 fly @ 15; 3x12 shoulder press @ 20. Ten attempted abdominal leg lifts.
The pool is uncovered and being prepared for its opening in 10 days. Wheee!