It’s been a long week.

Things have been a little stressful on the cockatiel front. The budgies are happy babies, but Adira’s feathers are just getting worse and worse. Considering we really don’t know her history, there are a lot of scary things that could be happening.

Grandpa peeked at her a couple days ago to make sure that there weren’t any emergencies we had to deal with right then, considering the first appointment we could get with her vet was on Friday. But he said she was looking good. Her feathers, while broken, were not showing the deformities associated with Beak and Feather, thank god.

Rijke, her vet, agreed today and instead said that these were the effects of a very poor diet as a baby, so her little feathers are weak and brittle. We already knew her breeder wasn’t an ethical one, so that really did not come as a surprise.

We’ve been working on getting her off the Trill bullshit, but as long as we keep doing what we’re doing, her new feathers should be fine.

It also means she’s lost the feathers cockatiels use for stability, so she is especially prone to falls and injuries. That’s fine. Her big cage is waiting for when she is ready for it, but. Until then, we’ve got her in a hospital cage with a lot of out of cage time so she still gets plenty of (safe) exercise.

Which was an issue yesterday.

While I was talking to Kosh, she had been climbing on the inside of her cage. Little girl managed to stick her wing through the bars and fall on her back, twisting the poor wing terribly. So Kosh is flying around the room at Adira’s distress, I rush back to her cage and it’s like. I’ve got to actually move her wing to get her out. She did not approve and let me know with a bite. It’s the first bite I’ve gotten from her and it was pretty deep, but. Man. I knew she would because she was in pain and there I had to go and make it worse in order to help her.

Her wing is recovering now, thankfully! No serious damage done, though she is — understandably — skittish of my hand.

I made sure that she’s okay and just cuddle her to me, while Kosh was still flying around the room. I admit I was maybe crying a bit >.> because, you know, seeing a baby hurt is just a killer. And so Kosh, being the wonderful, empathetic little boy he is, flew over to me and landed on my other hand. (Which I was keeping away from Adira because I didn’t want to scare her.)

He starts kissing the back of my hand and going ‘It’s safe! It’s safe!’ And, dear god, just even thinking about this is going to make me cry again. But yeah. Suffice to say, he’s just the biggest sweetheart.

In short, I have the best babies ever.

Poor Adira has been having some problems lately with her tailfeathers. In the last couple of days, she’s broken off all the tailfeathers on the right side — which is the same side as her injured foot and the bad wing.

She doesn’t seem to be plucking, she does seem to be terribly rough on her tailfeathers in particular: mauling them in determined preening sessions until I can hear the feather shaft cracking. It’s honestly freaking me out. After losing both Lyta and Vir so recently, my head is not in a good place. So, not only does Adira have an appointment with her vet on Friday, but we’re going to take her to Kim’s father tonight for a quick check-up.

I’m ridiculously lucky in that not only is ‘Grandpa’ an avian vet, but Grandpa’s best friend (and the gentleman we got Ivy from) is an actual avian expert. Her current avian vet is awesome and she’s been seeing the babies along with Grandpa for the last seven years. So I know that Adira is in good hands.

Kosh has picked up that I’m worried and is refusing to leave me, which is making typing difficult but I am incredibly grateful for the kisses. He usually saves preening for Kim, who he has strongly bonded to, but the little guy keeps preening my eyebrows, which is a sensation I am not quite used to.

Speaking of the boy, he’s been spitting out new phrases like crazy in the past couple of days. He just said “Oh, I think so.”, which I’ve never heard before. And I got “You are the BEST boy!” an hour ago, which was something I said to him for the first time (and only once) this weekend.

It honestly amazes me how quickly he picks things up. His vocabulary is huge and he seems to learn phrases most easily if they are said with affection. Excitement helps, but it appears to be affection that makes the difference.