Hazards

The great outdoors has it's hazards, and parrots have their instincts and behaviours to help them deal with them. The indoor environment has its hazards too, and it is up to us to keep them under control.

The first I want to mention is non-stick (PTFE coated) cookware. These utensils are fine in most situations, but the first time you let a pot burn dry, or use this sort of stuff in the oven, you have an excellent chance of killing all your birds! Why risk it? Do what I do and get rid of all that stuff and cook on stainless steel and cast iron. I used to say that this stuff releases some mysterious avian nerve gas, but I just learned the identity of the substance and it makes sense. Non stick cookware releases hydrogen fluoride (hydrofluoric acid when dissolved in water), when heated above a certain temperature. This isn't good for us either, but birds are engineered for flight, and their highly tuned respiratory systems absorb this stuff so quickly that what would simply be an annoying irritant to us, is deadly to them.

Some foods that are perfectly normal and pleasant for us are toxic for birds. The three that come to mind immediately are: Coffee (caffeine), Chocolate, and Avocado. I have heard about problems with avocado for years, but was somewhat skeptical until I read the following sad story (this is written by Gail Worth, and is takend from the highly recommended Aves International website):

Many people already know that avocado can be lethal to parrots if consumed. It is not known if it is just the flesh of the avocado and/or the pit that is the dangerous part. I was not sure if I believed this to be true until I saw the results of eating avocado with my own eyes several years ago. My neighbor and I had donated a pair of African Greys to another young man who was in our neighborhood. He loved these birds and cared for them well. One morning he appeared on my front porch, sobbing, with the dead male Grey and two dead Grey babies. He hadn't even known that the birds had laid eggs nor that they had chicks. He also had the very ill female in a small cage. I asked him to bring me their food tray as it loked like a toxin to me. Indeed, there was a large partially eaten avocado in the middle of the food dish. There were scraping marks on the pit that had been made by the birds' beaks. My young friend had given them the avocado because he had a tree in his yard and the birds had been consuming more food recently (feeding the chicks, of course). Our avian veterinarian could not save the female bird either so this was the sad end to the neighborhood breeding project! 4/12/02

The next thing to consider is that birds love to chew, and will explore their environment and chew almost anything and everything. They need to have things in their cages to chew and destroy, but consider when they are out of their cages. The first thing that comes to my mind is electric cords. Then certain (many) houseplants are toxic. Heavy metals (zinc, lead, copper, and more) are toxic. And on it goes, this is a lot like baby-proofing your house.

I should also mention you may want to consider protecting your property. What is your spouse going to do to the bird, when he/she discovers the bird has shredded the priceless heirloom handed down from Aunt Hilda? You really cannot blame the bird if it decides to remodel your furniture, it is your job to make sure this cannot happen. If your house has old lead paint, you have a big issue to deal with.

And the final thing to consider is that of burned and drowned birds. I have heard two stories of birds in toilets, one drowned and the other was rescued. Moral of the story is to keep the toilet lids shut. Unless you have a fireplace or some kind of open heaters (or a cast iron stove), the main place with burning hazards is the kitchen. The consequences are too ugly and obvious to belabor; even without the risk of burns (likely to be fatal), cooking fumes indicate that the kitchen is no place for a bird, even for a visit.

And if your bird is flight-capable, a whole world of other issues and hazards present themselves, the topic of yet another essay.