LeahOcarina
Moving in
- Joined
- 4/24/19
- Messages
- 13
- Real Name
- Leah
Sooo I felt weird not introducing myself, so here I am I guess. Thing is, I don't have a bird myself but my friend does. His name is Teto (tea-toe) and he hasn't had it easy. (Also dw, she has no problem with me explaining why. I'm not just giving her info out without her knowledge or blessing.) Teto is a white face gray male. You can skip to the end if you want. That's the real introduce-y part. The rest is kind of explaining some stuff.
tl;dr on this paragraph: Teto changed hands a couple times before getting to his forever home.
He grew up in the back of a Mexican Restaurant near a window and, as my friend was genuinely told, was supposed to sound an alarm if he saw police cars. Eventually he ended up in the hands of a Spanish teacher whose wife got pregnant. They couldn't make keeping her away from him work, and my friend has kept birds for as long as I can remember. Her mother was a teacher and mentioned that, so Teto ended up with my friend after that.
tl;dr on this paragraph: Unfortunate circumstances turned into abuse and a dysfunctional household which led to a very anxious, unhappy bird.
The rough part is her Dad was bipolar with schizophrenic tendencies (schizoaffective) and would go into manic episodes. It used to be temporary, but eventually he went too far to come back. He became abusive and everybody was always yelling, screaming, or crying. They had tried to get him into a mental hospital. The doctors asked him not to be released but insurance said to cut him loose anyway. They didn't have a choice but to get him out because of the abuse, but they never had enough proof to do so. Eventually he started throwing things at the mom which left marks on the wall and they were finally able to get a protective order-- please keep in mind I'm skipping a lot of stuff and they weren't throwing a mentally ill person out in the cold due to being mentally ill. Trust me on that; as a non-neurotypical myself I wouldn't be friends with them anymore if that was the case. The Dad is housed and safe, just away from them (again, who he was violent with). Teto was anxious as heck at all times because of it all. He started pulling out his feathers and had a bald spot under his wing because of it. It was getting to the point of dangerous! Thankfully everything is growing back just fine and he's a happy little guy now that things are calm.
Actual introduction lol:
So fast forwarding to now Teto has been much different since the dad has been gone. For one he has vicious separation anxiety from my friend (Kristen), but for the most part he's just been more... bird like? Kristen says the yelling during previous manic fits made him afraid of the Dad, and that now that he's not around that cloud of regular anxiety has cleared for the poor little guy. I've noticed a lot less self-soothing behaviors myself. Anyway, now that he's acting like a normal birb (save for ear-piercing flock calling when Kris isn't around) I realize I know pretty much zip about cockatiels because Teto pretty much kept to himself except throwing seeds in my bookbag hahaha If it was out of reach he'd yell at me until I moved it closer (I just zipped it. That was good enough for him). I've been staying with my friend for a bit now and Teto keeps doing things I've never seen him do in the decade I've known him. It makes me nervous when my friend isn't around and he does that because I get worried there's something wrong. Google searches for making sure he's okay always led me here, and I've visited this place so much in the last week it felt wrong to not sign up. I'll probably mostly lurk, but it also felt wrong not to say hi at least once, so hello! I am friend of bird.
tl;dr on this paragraph: Teto changed hands a couple times before getting to his forever home.
He grew up in the back of a Mexican Restaurant near a window and, as my friend was genuinely told, was supposed to sound an alarm if he saw police cars. Eventually he ended up in the hands of a Spanish teacher whose wife got pregnant. They couldn't make keeping her away from him work, and my friend has kept birds for as long as I can remember. Her mother was a teacher and mentioned that, so Teto ended up with my friend after that.
tl;dr on this paragraph: Unfortunate circumstances turned into abuse and a dysfunctional household which led to a very anxious, unhappy bird.
The rough part is her Dad was bipolar with schizophrenic tendencies (schizoaffective) and would go into manic episodes. It used to be temporary, but eventually he went too far to come back. He became abusive and everybody was always yelling, screaming, or crying. They had tried to get him into a mental hospital. The doctors asked him not to be released but insurance said to cut him loose anyway. They didn't have a choice but to get him out because of the abuse, but they never had enough proof to do so. Eventually he started throwing things at the mom which left marks on the wall and they were finally able to get a protective order-- please keep in mind I'm skipping a lot of stuff and they weren't throwing a mentally ill person out in the cold due to being mentally ill. Trust me on that; as a non-neurotypical myself I wouldn't be friends with them anymore if that was the case. The Dad is housed and safe, just away from them (again, who he was violent with). Teto was anxious as heck at all times because of it all. He started pulling out his feathers and had a bald spot under his wing because of it. It was getting to the point of dangerous! Thankfully everything is growing back just fine and he's a happy little guy now that things are calm.
Actual introduction lol:
So fast forwarding to now Teto has been much different since the dad has been gone. For one he has vicious separation anxiety from my friend (Kristen), but for the most part he's just been more... bird like? Kristen says the yelling during previous manic fits made him afraid of the Dad, and that now that he's not around that cloud of regular anxiety has cleared for the poor little guy. I've noticed a lot less self-soothing behaviors myself. Anyway, now that he's acting like a normal birb (save for ear-piercing flock calling when Kris isn't around) I realize I know pretty much zip about cockatiels because Teto pretty much kept to himself except throwing seeds in my bookbag hahaha If it was out of reach he'd yell at me until I moved it closer (I just zipped it. That was good enough for him). I've been staying with my friend for a bit now and Teto keeps doing things I've never seen him do in the decade I've known him. It makes me nervous when my friend isn't around and he does that because I get worried there's something wrong. Google searches for making sure he's okay always led me here, and I've visited this place so much in the last week it felt wrong to not sign up. I'll probably mostly lurk, but it also felt wrong not to say hi at least once, so hello! I am friend of bird.
