Snickers Update

Yesterday I was running late. I had to take the boys to swim and then go to a meeting at their school. In order to get ready, I had to stop in the middle of feeding Snickers and ask the Mister to take over. I’ve been very good about doing all the Snickers work myself, both because I’m the one who brought the bird home and because this would be the time I bring home a baby animal with a rare communicable disease that turns everyone into ducks. Better safe than sorry.

But asking him to finish Snickers was unavoidable. So I knocked on his office door and said please and thank you and you’re awesome. I noticed him smiling at Snickers getting so excited about the bottle and as I ran by I said, “It’s fun, huh, to feed something so little.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But she still hit every ugly branch in the tree on the way down.”

I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but Snickers is alive and well. Lots of changes in just one week, too!

Snickers was unfeathered all over but the wings two weeks ago, and even those still had feather sheaths. (You can see that picture here.) S/he couldn’t walk, couldn’t perch (stand on my finger), and really couldn’t stand very well, either. Snickers spend the first few days sleeping and eating. Come to think of it, s/he still spends most of the day sleeping and eating, but stays awake longer after eating.

Other changes including perching for a few seconds at a time. We work on that every day. Snickers can now stand and there is a little bit of walking/hopping, but only when the bottle comes out. It’s more of an adorable shuffle. And, you can see in Snicker’s sexy wing picture, the feather sheaths are starting to dissolve and some downy feathers (in gray and white) are coming in on the back and side. The yellow fuzz on the neck is gone, and today I noticed that some feathers are coming in on the neck and a couple on the head. The head is still yellow fuzz, but I bet in a week or we’ll have more feathers than fuzz.

Lastly, we are spending more time outside. I read that birds at the fledgling stage, which Snickers is fast approaching, spend some time on the ground or on low perches. The Mister and the boys are researching outdoor pigeon houses to build for Snickers. I’ll move Snickers there and, hopefully, once s/he is ready to fly, that will be that. I’m hoping to have that house set up in the next week or two.

When I first brought home Snickers, s/he was drinking from a baby pet bottle with the nipple snipped to the bottom. Now that s/he has almost doubled in size (!!) I’ve started cutting fingers off of rubber gloves and poking holes in them. The video above is of Snicker’s 3rd time using the rubber glove “nipple.” Snickers hasn’t quite got the hang of it, but the learning curve sure is cute!