I feel guilty about my parrots

[sheffy4]

Strange thread title, I know.
I'm 23 now, and I became a bird owner when I was in 4th Grade. My first bird was a cockatiel, and I became very attached to her and birds in general. If I were to have a totem animal, it would be a bird. Unfortunately, my cockatiel died a few years later of a heart problem. Meanwhile, my sister had purchased a Quaker Parrot, and his personality was very captivating and fun, so after my cockatiel died, my parents bought me a young Quaker. Shortly after that, my Dad bought my Mom an Umbrella cockatoo as a gift. I became the bird person of the house, eventually taking over the responsibilities of all the birds, though technically I only owned one. I would play games with them, and laugh with them, (My quaker, named Rebel, eventually learned to imitate my laugh, so whenever I laughed, he would imitate me, and I would laugh even harder)
Needless to say, I loved them a lot.
However, when I graduated high school, I began neglecting them. I would not get them out of their cages as often as I used to, and the poor cockatoo had developed a screaming habit from being neglected. I felt terrible. I decided to give all the birds to a Bird Rescue organization, where they would be matched with appropriate homes. I never knew what became of them, and I feel bad for abandoning them.
It wouldn't be on my mind so much, except that I often have nightmares where I will have my birds, but in the dream I would forget to feed them for days at a time. I have tried forgiving myself for what I did, but apparently it hasn't worked because my dreams keep happening. I know this is a weird post, but I would love to hear what you guys have to say. Thanks

[SonoranBob]

I understand your situation very well.

My late wife had an Umbrella Cockatoo, and I have an African Gray.

Due to deteriorating health my wife had to give up the Umbrella. He was going through puberty and she could not deal with the constant screaming nor could she give him as much attention as he craved. Umbrellas are very needy birds. And I had my hands full with my own bird and could only help her so much.

Like you, despite the fact she loved her bird, she gave him up to a rescue organization. It was actually an ideal circumstance: the local rescue org is the largest and best in the country, they have huge permanent quarters for large parrots and in fact are building a free flight aviary specifically for Cockatoos. Since my wife was dying and was very uncomfortable without knowing that her bird had a permanent home, the rescue people were willing to bypass adoption and give her bird a permanent home. So no worries about what will become of the bird years down the road when the host family situation changes, etc.

Even so, my wife was heartbroken and went through a great deal of grief work over this at a time when she didn't really need the extra stress. She was still quite heartbroken about it when she died some six months after giving up the bird.

Because parrots, particularly large ones, are some of the most advanced sentient beings on earth aside from humans, we do naturally develop deeper and more complex relationships with them than we do with, say, dogs or cats. And since most large parrot species live for 40 to 80 years, we also develop expectations and hopes for long-term relationships similar to those we have for our fellow humans. Dog and cat lovers understand at some level that it's a more short term, 10 to 15 year thing and when the pet dies or has to be given up, there is not so much of a sense of being "cheated" out of a lot of years. Also, it's MUCH more difficult and demanding to care for parrots -- they are like 3 year olds that never grow up -- so it is harder to find good long term situations for them when we have to give them up.

This implies that there will be a very powerful grieving process involved with giving up a parrot companion. I'm not dissing the relationships people have with other pets, I'm simply saying that it happens. Unless you're fairly clueless, there is also a much stronger sense of responsibility because of the long term nature of the relationship.

So I think what you're experiencing is normal and you will probably find it helpful to treat it as a loss and understand and work through it as a normal grieving process. There is an excellent online forum that has a section for people grieving pet losses, you might benefit from sharing with others in the same situation:

Grief Healing Discussion Groups

In addition, some people have a particularly strong connection to animals. My wife was such a person. Those of us who are indifferent to animals need to be very understanding about this, as it can seem over the top, almost sick (in some cases it can be that such people develop relationships with animals at the expense of their people skills, but that is a separate issue and at its core it is just a particular gift the person has for relating to animals and not inherently a bad thing). My wife loved animals and at the peak of her life operated a kennel, raised several champions, had a farm with hundreds of head of exotic sheep, and so on. So I understood that losing the bird (which was also her last remaining pet) was HUGE. Sheffy4, people by and large will not understand your deep connection to the birds and your sense of loss, so I would really, really recommend you check out the above link or Google others like it and commisserate with some fellow animal lovers.

I myself am not a huge animal lover, but even I would have to do some grieving if I lost my Gray. It would be hard not to miss someone who cries out with genuine happiness, "Daaaaady!" when I come home, or who wakes me with "Bob! Good morning, Bob! Daddy! Come here! SmallTalk want some food! Good morning!".

So ... taking this need of yours seriously and giving yourself some TLC and some permission to grieve, and getting some support, will help you enormously, I'll wager. As will understanding what grieving is about and how it works ... you may well not know much about that at this point in your young life, with the result that you are "stuck" in grief and could eventually work out of it if you learned how to cooperate with it.

Best,

--Bob

[Angela]

I totally get it. I had my beloved sun conure boarded while I went on vacation, and he picked up some disease in there and died a couple of weeks after I got home. Boy, did I suffer, both from missing him and from the guilt. Oh boy. It has been many years and I still get a pang when I think about him. He used to jump off his cage every morning and strut tap.tap.tap over to my bed, use his little beak to pull himself up into my bed, and come snuggle up on my pillow next to my face, looking for love. I loved that little bird so much, and felt like such a failure for not keeping him alive. (maybe that's why I never had children? )

[sheffy4]

Thanks you guys. I don't know anyone else outside my family that has had close relationships with birds before, so its at least nice to know I'm not alone.
And thanks for the link Bob, I'll definitely check it out.
I never actually considered that I could still be stuck in the "grieving" process. Maybe since it wasn't a person I lost, I didn't recognize this emotion as grief. It helps a lot just to be able to label my feelings.