By Carlie Thomas
Shelby the macaw is a young Blue and Gold macaw living in Bedfordshire with her owners Carlie and Dan who have two children each, Ben, Phebe, Kason and Elissa, and their dog and cat, Shadow and Elsa. It’s a full and busy household, and as you can imagine, it gets very noisy at times! But let’s go back a year to March 2020 to find out how Shelby came to be with this particular family.
In March 2020 Carlie’s Dad, John, sadly and unexpectedly passed away from complications around his lung cancer treatment. John played a vital role in Carlie’s life and the life of her two children Kason and Elissa and his passing had a huge impact on their lives. Carlie received a small amount of money from his passing, not enough to do anything spectacular with, and so she decided to use it on something that she could forever look at and remember her Dad by.
A macaw seemed the perfect choice in such a situation! Carlie had been researching and learning about macaws and how to keep them for almost 10 years, knowing that when the time is right she would bring one into her life. The perfect time never seemed to arrive as life took hold, things changed, finances never allowed etc, until now. Knowing that a macaw will live for 80 plus years, Carlie knew that it was now or never.