By Sarah Jackson
You know the old saying, “You get what you pay for.” This can be absolutely true when it comes to buying a parrot, as a cheap parrot can be a serious problem for people who spend their money on one. It is an incredibly sad fact that not everyone who deals with parrots really cares about the birds. The following are situations that I know about.
I remember someone telling me that a friend of theirs bought a parrot from a car at a flea market. He was told the bird was a couple of years old, so as a total novice, he bought the bird because it was so tame. First of all, it seems that anyone selling a bird that is smuggled or stolen will tell you that it is only a couple of years old even if they know it is much older. It could also appear to be tame because it is sick, but if the buyer believes the lies, they think they are getting a real deal. If a bird is obviously sick, it would need to be taken to a veterinarian before it dies.
However, if a bird has a disease that humans can get, for example Psittacosis, the buyer could also get very sick. It turned out that the person who bought the ‘cheap’ bird took it to the vet, but had to leave it there because he couldn’t pay the bill.
So much for that really good deal! I was also pretty certain that the man telling me the story was, in fact, the man who actually bought the sick bird, but didn’t want to admit that he had been conned.