Sammy wasn’t the colourful, cheerful bird most people imagine when they think of a parrot.
The white-capped pionus trembled. He couldn’t fly, owing to the absence of feathers on his wings. He had ripped most of them out, leaving wounds on his chest. Inappropriately housed with a large macaw, the medium-sized parrot could have been killed by the other bird, or from a fall. Marie-Élisabeth Gagnon immediately knew she had to take him home.
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In the early 2000s, Marie-Élisabeth Gagnon was volunteering for the Toronto Humane Society, interviewing potential adopters for dogs. Gagnon was in her early 30s at the time and decided to take a break and, “Go on an adventure trip to Australia.” It was there that she encountered the beauty of parrots firsthand.
When his best friend of three decades went into a nursing home, Buddy was bereft. He couldn’t go too.
Instead, the 31-year-old Lilac-Crown Amazon parrot was given to a pet store where he huddled in a cage, acting scared and unhappy, a reaction similar to other sentient creatures that have bonded with people and then been separated. [story]
Toronto Star