Rudi's Story - severe string injury

The pictures of Ruci & Pina are absolutely precious


Louise

Love your pictures, Petra.
Pina is looking absolutely wonderful.

I love Rudi & Pina's story especially Rudi's feet. They healed amazingly!!! Excellent job!!!

Wonderful bathtime photos! Rudi and Pina look blissfully happy together!

Matilda wrote:

I agree...they are too cute. Pina is especially very beautiful and she reminds me of my Libby.

Thank you Charis . You know what - we have another nickname for Pina - we have called her Pina Doe Eyes because her eyes haven't changed at all. She still has those big dark baby eyes and it reminds us very much of a little fawn. She can look at you that everything seems to disappear...

EgypSwiftLady wrote:

Me too! They are so very sweet together

Yes - they are! Thank you Robin

Jackie's Mom wrote:

The pictures of Ruci & Pina are absolutely precious


Louise

Louise - what else could I do but continously photograph them...

AZWhitefeather wrote:

Love your pictures, Petra.
Pina is looking absolutely wonderful.

Cindy -

technocactus wrote:

I love Rudi & Pina's story especially Rudi's feet. They healed amazingly!!! Excellent job!!!

I am so happy about this!!!! I cannot say

Teresa wrote:

Wonderful bathtime photos! Rudi and Pina look blissfully happy together!

When I think about how sick Pina was and for how long then I only can say now - thank God that she is so happy now. She deserves it so very much.

Will Pina be the star of your next painting?

Maybe not the next one but Pina will surely be one of my models -

And here is a little video I made about Pina's and Rudi's loving relationship. I hope you'll like it - cuteness overload again with music....

Ah...young love!

Pina and Rudi have finished their first breeding cycle together with some overtime of one week.
Now they are fully in courting mode again and it is so lovely to hear Rudi sing again for the whole day.

What really irritates me though is that they do not want to "go" out any more . While Pina was sitting on the eggs Rudi regularly took his chance to fly out and have his time outside no matter what the weather was like. When it was bad he regularly returned a bit earlier or even decided to stay inside. Pina was always flying out when it was Rudi's turn on the eggs. Now they are in courtship mode again - since yesterday - are cuddling in the second nest beneath one of my chairs in our livingroom/studio, are running around here from time to time, do heavy helicoptering together but do not leave the appartment although their friends are waiting outside on the balcony. Isn't this strange? I openend the door several times to give them the chance to fly out but they don't want to. The weather is ugly, cold and rainy. Maybe they have become fuzzy about this but still - they love to fly together - I know that.

And now? They are real couchpotatoes . Did you ever experience this kind of thing? I am clueless....

Appreciate the update, Petra.
I am so glad that Pina and Rudi are getting on so well.

As far as having experience with any of mine becoming 'couch potatoes' I can't comment as they don't have the option to be free fliers.

I'm guessing that Pina and Rudi's decision not to 'go' isn't necessarily unusual. It sounds like they are very content with their surroundings and each other so they have no desire to free fly.

Loved the updates, photos and video! It's great to see Pina and Rudi so happy together!
They must be very contented with each other and their surroundings to be flying less! Maybe they'll wait until there is a really nice day before going out.
My Piper spent months indoors, not trying to fly out at all, though her cage door was open and so was the window. I thought she was simply aware that she couldn't fly much and was happy enough like that. That was before she decided to go outside to find a mate! I found her on the second day of searching, bedraggled and hungry. Since then I have kept either the window or the cage closed, but she's quite happy indoors, especially now she has a mate.

How are Pina and Rudi doing, Petra?

priya wrote:

This makes me want to share with you all,
there is this pigeon in my apartment complex that comes to feed which has some sort of thread wound around one of its legs pretty bad
I have been observing it since a month. The poor bird is living with that and i dread to think how much pain it would be causing. It looks more like some sort of a thread rather than string. I don't want that this leads to some sort of an infection, which i am scared might happen :(

Wondering if i will be able to catch him at all :( As the only place i can catch them is from my window ledge and it would be very difficult as the moment i go there, the birds take off. The balconies are always closed with sliding doors as i don't want my cat to get to them and in any case the pidgies don't come to the balcony.

So, wondering how to catch him :( But i desperately want to help the poor fella :(

I'm sorry to use this thread to post this but since i had mentioned about it in the past wanted to update

The pigeon i was referring to above died After i posted here, Petra gave me some ideas to catch it and i was on the look out for this pigeon for many days. I was never able to spot it but hoped that it was safe and that i'll catch it and treat it someday. The threads were wound very bad to its leg and what i feared the worst happened.

Today afternoon when i went to the balcony to my horror i saw a pigeon dead and hanging upside down from the balcony railing of another house on the 7th floor I was too shocked and upset at the sight. The residents of that house were away on a vacation and had left the house keys with their neighbor.

It was very disturbing and sad to see the poor bird in that condition, though dead, at the mercy of nature. Me and Dev went to their house in the evening and requested if they could open the door. To my horror it was the same poor bird i had spotted
The threads had got entangled with some metal wires on the balcony railing and it couldn't free itself from it. I can't bear to think how much it would have suffered struggling to get out of there and for how many days

Why didn't anyone spot the poor bird battling for its life and save it? Why was i not able to see it earlier and save its life? I am very heart broken and upset

What do you call it when i couldn't catch a bird i wanted to save when it was alive and had to spot it like this only after it died? The same bird, in the same place, couldn't my fate have allowed me to see it when it was stuck there, helpless?

It is incredibly sad and i am terribly upset We put it in a box with a prayer and Dev took the bird to bury it. Fly free and high my angel i'm sorry i couldn't be there to save you

Dear Priya...I'm so sorry for the bird and so sorry for you pain. I don't know what you could have done differently since you were unable to find the bird. This situation was beyond your control. Still...having gone through a similar situation some years ago, I understand how this poor bird hurts and haunts you.
Recently, I had a bird coming here with a crop torn open, probably from a hawk attack. She would eat and the seed would fall right out. It broke my heart to watch and while I tried to catch her, she would leave before dark and so it was impossible. She came for a week and then she didn't come any more...
I'll never forget her.
Some things are out of our control.

Oh Priya - I am extremely sorry for this and can so very much understand what you are feeling. It just makes me cry . But as Charis said - things are sometimes out of our control. It is very upsetting and it happens to me too that I feel extremely angry about myself when I could not help. Especially when I think about the beginning of my "carreer" of taking care for pigeons, giving them to the emergency vets only to get to know that the birds have been euthanized or died. I still sometimes think about these poor birds and what I could have done differently.

Please do not start to feel guilty about this - i know this is very difficult for a loving heart - but otherwise it will tear you apart eventually. Think about all the lives you were able to save. This is the only way we can handle this.

Sending you

Thanks Charis and Petra You are right, sometimes we cannot do anything but watch helplessly.
Just that it makes me feel terrible that the poor bird had to die such a terrible death.

Charis, felt very bad reading about the bird you mentioned with the torn crop :( Poor baby :( Hoping that she is safe somewhere

Wonder why these poor birds have to undergo so much Can only wish that it rests in peace

And very sorry Petra, i had to ruin this thread which was getting happy with Rudi and Pina's recovery, with such a sad news

Priya...I don't think there is any why to it...as part of living, awful, terrible things happen and as much as we try to keep creatures and ourselves and those we love safe... really....most is beyond our control.

Sad but true :(

Priya,don't you worry about "ruining" this thread. If we would not have all these happy stories we could not carry on with trying our best. It would simply be unbearable. And it comforts me for all the terrible things that happen too and which you cannot avoid.

On a more happy note I have 2 more little videos with Rudi - when he was preparing for their nest on the closet and when Rudi and Pina were together on the balcony for the first time:


It was so sweet to watch them and how excited they both were.
This is a while ago now. In the meanwhile Pina has laid a new egg again - in the nest on the closet and the whole cycle started again.

As an update on his feet: the inflammations have completely disappeared and the deep cuts are closed. While I am still bathing his feet twice a week in warm water to see if there is old tissue to be removed I have realized that on his "good" foot the inner toe is stiff and on his bad foot 3 toes seem to be stiff besides the middle one. Also the toe that goes normally backwards is still showing forward and this seems to be permanent. Is there anything I could do to change that - I mean aginst the stiffness? I assume that the nerves have been damaged by those strings a long time ago.

He can walk without limping but has some problems with balancing when he needs to cling to narrow surfaces such as the edge of a box although he manages quite well. I don't think that this would be a big problem outside - or what do you think? When you watch him how he is climbing into the box on the closet he seems to get on with it fairly well. So do I make too much fuss about him?

Each time when he comes back from outside I look at his feet to see whether he has some new injuries but he has not. I think it is more important that he can walk properly - thus looking for food on the ground - than trying to climb on something. What do you think?

Sweet videos, Petra. Pina is so adorable.
I don't know if you have DMSO in Germany and if you do, it may help to rub some of that on Rudi's stiff toes.
Elli has the same trouble because of the surgery he had done to his foot and his foot is clubbed. At time he looses his balance and he can't perch with that foot.

Wonderful videos, Petra. Thanks for sharing them with us.
Rudi was quite busy with his nest building duties. Bless hhis heart.
It looks like he's doing wonderfully.
And Pina. Such a little darling and looking wonderful as well.
You did an awesome job of caring for her when she was so ill.

Thank you so much Cindy.
Here is another little video I made already in September - it shows how it looked like when Pina started to fall in love with Rudi while he was still confined in his box and they could not touch one another. So just imagine the cover of Rudi's box was closed when Pina was always climbing behind his box and communicating with Rudi through the plastic walls...

Matilda wrote:

I don't know if you have DMSO in Germany and if you do, it may help to rub some of that on Rudi's stiff toes.
Elli has the same trouble because of the surgery he had done to his foot and his foot is clubbed. At time he looses his balance and he can't perch with that foot.

Charis - thank you very much for this tip. Yes, I would have access to DMSO 98% solution via Ebay - but I am not sure how I am supposed to use this stuff which is quite dangerous if not used properly from what I have read. Can you tell me how I have to use this? I really don't want to make things worse and even burn Rudi's feet.
Btw - you did not say how it helped really with Elli? Can you describe some?