Day 3 of my mandatory vocal rest to try to heal my vocal nodules. There were 2 events of note today.
This morning, I couldn’t help but blurt out, “OH SH!T! ANTS!” when I discovered a line of ants marching right up my bird’s cage to his food dish. How could I help myself? I cleared away all of his food and newspaper and hauled the cage outside to hose it down. Usually I take care of Gaudi while Geoff hoses down the cage but I somehow managed to do it all with him on my shoulder. I thought I might miss the window for the swimming lanes but I still managed to squeeze in a 30 minute swim on my lunch break.
Gaudi is my special needs Quaker Parrot; he’s completely blind. Gaudi depends on touch and sound and manages exceptionally well, but he’s very sensitive. Before going silent, my primary concern was about how Gaudi would respond to me being silent. I can whistle though because it doesn’t use my vocal cords, so I’ve been whistling all the live long day, and he actually likes it and recognizes that it’s me so it’s basically been fine. Until tonight, that is.
This evening, just as I was thinking about how well things had been going with Gaudi when things took a turn for the worse. It was like in my head I had said the famous last words to jinx how well things had been going. Gaudi was on my shoulder and heard Geoff speaking and got confused about who was who and started biting me. I couldn’t say any of the things I usually would to reassure him and the whistling was not cutting it. He started to bite in confusion and then I couldn’t get him back on his cage. I probably should have just spoken but I felt truly handicapped and helpless. He was very frightened and lashing out and I got pretty emotional. It was pretty awful.
The biting incident in the evening was a definite low point, but I feel less tired today. Tomorrow will be better.