Lucy & Shayne

THE STORY OF LUCY AND SHAYNE

Lucy and Shayne were my first ever parrots of my own. They were Poicephalus robustus suahelicus. (Now re-named to Poicephalus fuscicollis suahelicus.) Otherwise known at that time in the country as Cape Brown Necked parrots.

This story is rather long, as it is the life story of these two birds, and also includes some background to the location, so I would recommend that you print it off, or alternately, save it to your PC unless you are prepared to sit and read this on line. No, it is not boring, at least those who have read it do not think so. I hope you too find it interesting and helpful to you. There are some experiences in this story, and in my other birds stories which will guide you in what to do and what not to do.

Acquiring & Raising some Beautiful Babies

In 1964 I lived in Africa in a country then known as Northern Rhodesia. Since being granted independence, this country is now called Zambia. I lived on a farm very close to the Congo border, in an area known as Kaniki. Kaniki was ten and a half miles (17 km) outside of a town called Ndola on the road to Mufulira, where I was born. Ndola was the commercial capital of the Copperbelt in Zambia.

Our labourers used to go into the forest area of the Congo, just a couple of miles (3 km) walking distance away. The area was really known as "No Mans Land" as it was the divide between the two counties. They would cut down trees for use as fire wood in our old fashioned boilers. Well, one day, they cut down a tree and a parrot flew out as the tree dropped to the ground. The labourer went to look at the area where the parrot had flown from and found two parrot chicks, totally featherless, but with just small spikes on them. He carefully took the babies and put them into his hat with the nesting material around them and brought the back to the farm house.

When they got back to the house, they brought the baby birds to my grandmother, who naturally told them off for what they had done. They said that as they were parrots, they expected to be paid for them. My grandmother told them that if the birds survived, she may consider paying them, but as she was a pensioner, all they could expect to get was £1.17/6d (one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence each.) She gave them half of the total and said they would get the balance if the babies survived. This amount would have been equivalent at the time to $2.85 (USA). Equating this to today's value would give something in the region of $15.

My grandmother was a very enlightened lady and although she had never raised parrots before, had watched wild birds and chickens raising their young and applied that principal to the babies. They were fed on bread soaked in water to make it edible. They had this fed to them several times every day, mostly by taking it from her mouth. Eventually, the two birds had a good lot of feathers formed on their bodies and my grandmother paid the labourers the remaining £1.17/6d, for which they were very happy.

Shortly after this, my grandmother went down with double pneumonia, and was extremely ill in bed. She was so ill in fact that she was delirious. The two birds refused to take food from anyone else and in fact bit everyone who tried to approach them. I had the bright idea of holding them with a towel wrapped around their wings and just their heads sticking out. Please note that at the time I was only thirteen years old. I used the same feed mixture that my grandmother had been giving them, and they eventually were so hungry that they took it from me. After several days, I decided to be brave and picked them up without the towel. It soon became apparent that one bird was more dominant than the other as she used to bite me if I fed her sister first. If I fed her first, she would always allow me to play with her afterwards though, so I soon started feeding her first. She was the larger of the two, and it was readily apparent which one was which. At the time, we had no idea of their sex and named them after my favourite television characters at the time. Later, when my grandmother was well once again, she tried handling the birds again, and although they would initially just give a small nip to her, allowed her to pick them up. We were the only two members of our family of eight that the birds allowed to handle them. They went through their first moult and looked even more beautiful than they had before. They both occupied the same small cage for sleeping, but I put them outside into a large cage every morning and brought them back in every evening. When I took them indoors, they slept in my bedroom, and I used to cheat and allow them to fly around my room before covering them over for the night. As a result, they really bonded with me and I could do anything with them.

Playing Games

Both Lucy and Shayne loved being cuddled and played with. We used to play hide and seek. This was their favourite game. The two birds would lift the bedcover and run underneath. This was the signal for me to go down to the opposite end and let them both find me. We would then have kissing and cuddling sessions when they got to the other side. This was often repeated several times. They also enjoyed flying to the window pelmets and back to me for kisses and cuddles. Another favourite which they enjoyed was picking things up and tossing them off their normal resting places. You couldn't, therefore, have any breakable out on display as they got the same treatment. Yet another favourite game was playing peepo through the windows. We had a large expanse of louver and plate glass windows on the front of our closed in veranda. They spent several hours a day just sunning themselves either at the windows or on the top of their bed cage during the day.

Most days, they were put outside into their large "day cage" and played with stick and twigs and ate all manner of tropical fruits or bathed themselves. Every evening, they were fetched inside and played with in my bedroom, prior to putting them to bed.

If I put them to bed and they did not want to go, they would shriek continuously until they were opened again. Then they would shriek until they were let out. Lucy was the worst. Even when out, she made a point of continuing to shriek, just to show that she was top bird, and that you couldn't do what she did not want. The shriek was awful. The noise went right through every nerve of your entire body. If you thought that a way out was to cover the cage. It did not work. Even turning the light out was no good. She would continue going. Eventually, however, she would give in when the light was off, but you did not dare turn it back on that night because she would start again, no matter how long after or what time of the night.

They both loved to bath every day and shower everyone and everything in site in the process. This meant checking their water and bathing bowls as both were used regularly.

Despite all the trials and tribulations, they were great to have and great friends and playmates.

Shayne's Escape

From memory, Shayne was about two years old and the year was about mid 1966. We were outside in the yard and I had her on my shoulder. She suddenly caught fright and flew off into the bush. Being Africa, all the bush was extremely heavy with growth and it was soon clear that we were not going to find her. I stood and called f or a long time. Lucy accompanied me outside and we both called, but no reply from Shayne. She was gone!

It must have been something like three months later. A neighbouring farm had a small community store selling all types of produce along with other basic day to day necessities. We had run out of something and being on a farm, the telephone system was a very unreliable party-line system which seldom worked well. I walked on down to the farm store and there in a cage on the veranda was what looked like Shayne. I called her familiar call, and she answered me. I couldn't believe my eyes or ears. I went to the cage and started stroking her and talking to her. The shop owner wanted to know what was going on. I explained that it was my bird which had escaped some months before. She said that they had caught the bird in the banana plantation eating from the fruit. They had not had a great deal of difficulty in catching her but she was wild. I showed the lady, whom I knew as Mrs. Plumridge, that I could touch and pat her. She tried, and was immediately nipped by the bird. I went off home and told my family what had happened. My mother suggested that we go on back and try and get Shayne back. Mrs. Plumridge would have nothing to do with it. I was beside myself. Here was my bird and I couldn't get her back. I had no way of proving she was mine. Yes, I could handle her, where nobody else could, but being a child, that did not mean anything. I resigned myself to the fact that the only way in which I could have any contact with my bird was to visit her every day after school. Mr. and Mrs. Plumridge had no objection, so I continued like this for several weeks. One evening, when we were all sitting in our closed in veranda, there was a knock at the door. I went to answer it and found the Plumridges there. They had spoken things over, and had decided that as the bird obviously was mine, it would be right to return her to me. Well, I can't tell you how I felt. I wanted to repay them for their kindness, but they wouldn't hear of it. I took Shayne and tried to re-unite her with Lucy. It had now been several months since Lucy had seen her. She wasn't having it. I now had to keep the two apart from each other as they Lucy was now clearly hostile toward Shayne.

Eventually, Lucy accepted Shayne back into the cage with her, but always bit her and me if I showed Shayne any form of favouritism, before doing so with her. I always had to feed or do anything to Lucy before even considering Shayne, as it meant blood for both of us if I did not. Her jealousy as a sister had now become an obsession. We both soon learned to do what Lucy wanted.

Lucy & Shayne Move Country

In 1972 I emigrated to what was then Rhodesia, but later became Zimbabwe after independence. I left the birds with my family to care for. I used to go back every long weekend or holiday as the distance between my new home and there was 500 miles (800 km). My grandmother told me that the birds always announced my arrival about thirty minutes before I got there. One day I decided to test the theory out and never told my family that I would be going home for the weekend. When I arrived, dinner had been cooked and was ready for me to eat. I asked how they knew to cook and was told that the birds had started to create when they were cooking, so my grandmother told them to cook extra for me as I would be there shortly. No one would believe her until I arrived. The birds obviously had some sixth sense which they were using. I had applied for CITES permits to move my birds to my knew home in the neighbouring country and I bundled them and their cage into the car and took them with me when I went back to my home away from home.

Mimicry Actions, & Calls

Lucy was very good at copying actions, but only said one or two words. Her favourite action to copy was when I sneezed. She would sit on her perch, and as soon as I made any indication that I was going to sneeze, she would lean forward on her perch, make the sound of a sneeze and then slowly stand up and look at me. This action was enough to put you off sneezing most times, as it was really comical. If you moved around in a repetitive way, she would copy that too.

I had to put padlocks on the seed and water access and also on the door as she would remove the rings and let herself out.

Shayne, on the other hand, only used to whistle. She had a whistle to greet me, one to announce my arrival and another for being annoyed. Lucy had the same whistles to her vocabulary, so it was difficult to tell at a distance who was making the sound. If they both started up in unison, then the din could be quite overpowering. They both had a sound that could have been an attempt at hello, but sounded more like the " l " was missing when they said it. This sound was made when I approached their cage. They always both whistled and screeched when it was time to go to bed. The screech sounded rather like " aaark" when they made it.

When we were living in a town in South Africa called Middelburg, we had moved onto a brand new housing estate. There were no gates, fences or gardens around any of the properties when we moved in there. Three days, or thereabouts, after our move, I was out walking in the area with our dogs. One of our neighbours came up and asked me if I could hear a gate squeaking. I listened, and replied that I could not. Just then Shayne made her usual sound when she was wanting to go to bed. "There it is again!" our neighbour said. I just burst out laughing. He wasn't very amused and asked what I was laughing about. I told him that the noise he heard was my parrot, Shayne. I had to take him round to our courtyard and show him the bird before he would believe that it was not a "rusty old gate" squeaking. He then laughed too, and said he had spent the last couple of days walking around trying to find the gate, as he knew that we were on a new estate and there shouldn't be any.

Psittacosis Strikes

I was called up for compulsory military service in Rhodesia and used to spend seven weeks away on call up and eight weeks at home continuously throughout the year. On one period while I was away in 1978, Lucy, the more dominant of the two birds caught Psittacosis and died just before I returned from military call up. I was devastated when I returned to discover this as I had had her from a baby, and she was only twelve years old. Relatively young for an African parrot. I found Shayne, her smaller sister in a very bad state, and a Landlady beside herself as she could not drive and did not know what to do. I took Shayne to a local Veterinarian whom I knew personally. He was not an Avian Vet, so said he would do his best. He gave her an injection of something or other and gave me Terramycin to put in her water. I had to take her back every day for a check-up and more injections. I cannot remember how long this went on for, but eventually she started to get better. She pulled through without any side effects or problems.

I am firmly of the conclusion that droppings from wild birds must have entered the cage, possibly the seed or water and this is how they picked up the illness. We always made a point of putting them in the shade of the trees in the garden every good day.

After Lucy's death, I was offered a new male bird by the manager of the company I worked for. To follow his story, you will need to read the story of Cheeky.

Shayne Moves Country Again

She once again accompanied me to South Africa in 1981 with her friend Cheeky when we went to live there, and once again I needed a CITES permit (read up about this via the link on my home page) to move her, and got that. She took ill in 1983 and again there were no Avian Vets in or near the town in which I lived, but the local Vet had had experience with birds and suggested that she had had a stroke. He suggested it had been caused by some sort of bacteria. She was treated with Terramycin again and pulled through without any ill effects. We moved house and towns several times in South Africa (ten times in all) and Shayne and our other birds were always put together in the removals van in their cages and moved that way. We always accompanied the van to the new premises, and the birds always were first into the new home.

Yet again, Shayne Moves Country (Brrrrr!!!)

When we decided in 1989 that we were going to move to the UK, we ran into problems. As she was a CITES bird, the South African Authorities were not prepared to grant the permit to allow her or any of my other parrots out of the country. Eventually they relented, first on the African Grey, and then eventually on both of my Cape Brown Necked parrots. Shayne was on the move again with Cheeky and Percy. We now had to get permits for the UK entry, arrange their Veterinary quarantine for six months there and arrange their shipping across. I was fortunate to be working for a forwarding and shipping agency and they gave me tremendous help and support in arranging their move. The three birds had a special air carriage container made, so they would all be next to each other. Their cages were put into the aircraft's hold on the same flight as they were booked on, and they were met at the other end. Heathrow airport was 45 miles (70 km) away from their new home, and they were met by my sister-in-law. We were only due to join them some weeks later.

The three birds were moving from a hot tropical climate to a very cool northern hemisphere climate.

This time Shayne and Cheeky started to call and create on the day that we flew out of South Africa and carried on, much to the annoyance of my sister-in-law and her family, not to mention their neighbours, right up until the time we arrived at her address. Sadly, we had to leave them at her home as they were quarantined at that address and not allowed to be moved until the quarantine period expired. Fortunately six months and several visits later we were fully re-united again and able to move them to our home.

Heart Break!

In 1993 tragedy struck! My African Grey Percy I had inherited when my mother died in 1984, decided to join her when he died of old age. Shayne was devastated and within days was in a real bad way. We took her to our local Vet, who by chance just happened to be an Avian Vet who had looked after the birds at London Zoo at one time. She had already seen the Grey and diagnosed that he had probably died of old age as there were no signs of illness. Shayne however was diagnosed of suffering from a broken heart. I sat up half the night for almost a week holding her in my hands and comforting her. There was little we could do for her and she joined her lifelong buddy just weeks after he had gone.

We now only had one bird left of our three we had brought over to UK with us.

To read up about our remaining bird's life, please go to the story on Cheeky or return to one of the pages listed below at the end of this article.

I hope you have enjoyed the read, even if it is only half as much as I enjoyed the experience, happiness and the pain of the losses of my friends and companions.

Thank you for reading my story of my babies on this page. Feel free to read all the stories relating to all the others from the HOME PAGE location..

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