By Roz Paterson

Orange-winged Amazon, Ollie, came into my life on August 1st 2010. He was silent, fearful and still, and had various respiratory disorders including aspergillosis. Over the next 10 years he blossomed into the most amazing friend. He had truly wrapped his beautiful wings around my heart.

Our nightmare began in the late summer of 2019 when I was shocked to find undigested food in Ollie’s droppings. Not all the time, just now and again. I put it down to eating unripe strawberries in the aviary. Ollie loved to pick his own strawberries and when he ran out of the red, he started on the green. I removed the strawberry plants, but the undigested pieces kept appearing. I called the vet out to see him and the test results for the faecal samples she took came back as normal. His weight was also normal at around 370gms.

Some months passed and I noticed Ollie, who never ate very much, seemed to have an increased appetite. One day at the beginning of December he couldn’t wait for breakfast and went into each parrot’s cage to ransack their millet spray. The result was horrifying enough to immediately call the vet again.

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