Already I'm noticing that Gemini could not hold her head up but I was thinking that maybe its just normal for her age! Well her first poop was tinged with red. I already knew that I knew more about birds in my area then any of the vets, so I'm on the phone from one side of the country to the other trying to get info from breeders - such as weight charts (nobody kept them 15 years ago, so not much help there). But they did confirm that she should be able to hold her head up. And that she had to have some kind of sickness, (the blood in the stool).

I finally, after 2 days and 2 VERY LONG nights with Gemini sleeping on my chest in a blanket so that I could feed her every time she awoke, located a so called avian vet 100 miles away. Well $150.00 later, I find out that Gemini is indeed less then 2 weeks old (can you imagine that she even survived the flight from Florida to New York). I also found out that she does have something wrong with her neck. The vet did take blood and would mail me medication for what-ever Gemini had. Turns out she had E-Coli. I slept on the couch with her on my chest for 2 weeks, praying that she would make it, and wondering how I could give this SWEET baby a quality life! I did not know if she would ever be able to even perch, let alone feed herself! Gemini, was and is, a survivor-she ate like a piggy and grew like a weed! The picture to the right is her at 17 days old:

By now, I had exhausted any means of trying to get any information on how to help this baby. I had thought of bracing her neck up, but when I tried to raise her head it seemed to bother her. So I decided to set her up in a heated aquarium with toys and all kinds of things hanging from the top, also Cheerios, fruits, veggies, millet, etc. under her (all for stimulation and encouragement to use her neck and thus develop muscle and control). My little fighter continued to grow and develop.

She could raise her head for hand-feeding, but when she relaxed, her head would be totally up-side down! By the age of 6 weeks, I knew that Gemini was finally over the E-coli and growing and gaining weight at an alarming rate. I just knew that she was going to make it! My Lord, I don’t think I had ever, nor will I ever again see such intelligence and wonder in a Fids eyes as I did in hers! To the left is a picture of Gemini at 6 weeks old (click for bigger pic).

Now I was facing the problem of converting her living arrangements from her nursery tank into a cage. I still did not know if she would actually be able to climb and perch and preen and feed herself, although she would grip onto my hand, and sit/perch with me, so I knew her legs were good and strong. And I would do what ever it took to allow her to learn to be independent. I knew that her cage had to be set up much different then a normal baby cage, but I did not have anything suitable.

I had no choice but to sell some of my other cages and some non producing (at least for me) breeder birds to buy a huge double decker cage that had horizontal bars on both sides. This allowed me to put perches, ladders (from end to end as perches), toys, bowls, etc at different levels of the cage. I covered one back corner with a blanket, and had a heating pad (on low) under that corner of the cage, and put Gemini’s favorite snuggle blanky and stuffed animal in the warm corner, fed Gemini and put her into her new home!

Did she freak out, yea right-its like WOW Mom this is great! She looked around, mouthed a few toys and snuggled in for a nap! It was not a day later and she WAS PERCHING! The perch was quite big around so it was easy for her to keep her balance. The next few weeks were milestone after milestone of progress made and far surpassed. She started to preen, to climb the sides of the cage, but she still slept in the warm corner.

Now it was time to teach her to feed herself. So she would join me at the table for dinner. I started by spoon feeding her (instead of the syringe), then progressed to having her help herself from a bowl of her own. Lord she was just SO smart, it was almost as if she could not wait to learn to be independent. By the age of 3 months she was not only almost weaned (she would have been, but I needed to continue with the nightly share supper sessions), but she was already starting to talk! I guess my sleeping with her on my chest for her first few weeks with me and constantly repeating,” I love You” and “Mommy’s Sweet Baby Grey” paid off because besides “Kitty”, ”Hello”, and “You hungry” those were among her first sentences!

But Gemini is not really handicapped, she is Special-Able. I mean how many birds do you know that go potty and yell “BOMB’S AWAY” and watch it fall!

We know by now that Gemini is able to raise her head enough to actually preen and she can feed herself (very well I might add)! She does walk with what I would call a sorta-rain-man walk, but doesn’t quite drag the left leg. I never imagined that she would even try to FLY! WRONG! Once she got comfortable enough with keeping her balance- then came the wing flapping! It was so hard to allow her to BE a PARROT; I just wanted to keep her protected and safe. Yea like SHE was gonna put up with THAT! Sure enough after about a week of practice she had take off! All I can say is that she can do right circles but not for long! Thank the Lord that once she got it out of her system, she does not fly unless she is spooked!

So far I have really tried to keep her away from the other fids, I reckon its time to let her socialize! Again, all my worry was for nothing! I just started leaving her door open and she would climb on up to the top and hang out! The others were curious but did NOT bother her!

The Grey with her here is my daughter's bird, Bam-Bam, he came from the same breeder and is about 10 weeks older then Gemini! (click for bigger pic)

What is funny is when the others enter HER cage and she is in there-I actually watched her grab hold of a Quakers tail and help him to the bottom of the cage-Then when she saw that I saw her do it, she looked down at him and said “You OK Baby-Huh You OK?” I cracked up! She would also call the kitty then pick up and toss her 30 0z water bowl at the cat (ya gotta love it ).

Gemini continued to make all kinds of progress not only with her balance, getting around, playing, eating and preening but her talking was phenomenal! I would tell people that she was so smart cause she had more blood flow to the brain.

Through out all of this, I was also hand-raising up to 20 Cockatiels at a time, up to 3 Quakers and Indian ring-necks. SO Gemini soon became the mother hen ya might say- as soon as she would see me getting my feeding station ready she would start saying (In her sweetest Mommy voice), “You hungry huh-want some, its good”

When Gemini was about 8 months old, I contacted the magazine, Bird Talk about writing her story for their “Special Bird” section. They wrote back to me asking if I could write the story and they were going to use it in a feature story about handicapped birds! So with my daughters help (actually she was more then just help), we wrote the story! Gemini appeared in the July, 1993 issue of Bird Talk magazine.

NOW I’m worried about moving Gemini (and my other birds) from the only home that she has ever known into a bedroom at my mom’s house. Thank the Lord my mom had the space and needed the company. I have also gotten a new baby grey. WELL yet again-The GRAND MADAM-Gemini proves to be the trooper and is telling all the other birds that “SHHH Its OK Its OK” while the moving is going on and during the ride (her first, but not her last) in the van! We get settled into our room, and Gemini loves it! Why? Because Mommy leaves her door open ALL the time (when Mommy is there) and she wanders around on the floor (coming to the edge of my bed asking “Wanna come up?” or, she plays on top, takes baths in other cages-Lord knows she doesn’t want HER cage all wet.

Now this bedroom is on the second floor of a very old house, and it did not take long before Gemini was freaking me out with the sounds of creaking stairs. I actually had to get up to see if somebody was coming up the stairs! Then she would chuckle (gotta love her)! Soon she realized that if she stood at the top of the stair-well, that when she talked, it amplified! OH BOY she had a whole new past-time and that is when she really started to talk!

This is how our little Talking Game started and progressed. It took a few weeks of adding the new stuff, but I thought it was quite fun…I would be down stairs, Gemini at the top:

Gemini-”Hello”

Me-”Whad-Ya Say"

Gemini-”I Love You”

Me-”I Love You TOO”

Gemini-“I Love You TOO”

That went on for a week. Then one day I answered her with: “I Love You so Much”. Well I reckon I spoke to fast, cause she answered back with “I Love YOU SMUSH”--SO I then would say I----LOVE----YOU----SO----MUCH----Yep, sure enough Gemini said it back just like that--ALL DRAWN OUT, she soon learned to start the whole thing with: ”Whad-Ya Say?” I wonder what she would be capable of if Irene Pepperburg had found her instead of Alex?-almost scary! LOL

Gemini is almost a year old now; her vocabulary is astounding she will even ask “Why are YOU upside down?” I’m starting to relax just a bit and I’m NOT hovering over her like a mother hen quite as much (it was VERY Hard) as a matter of fact my daughter had a great big part in helping to raise Gemini. If for some reason I couldn’t be there for a feeding, Jamie would jump at the chance, mainly because she was just as protective of her as I was!

So all is going well, Gemini is as normal as a bird can be with their head on upside down! Until one day, Gemini was doing her normal wandering around on the floor, I was on the bed reading, and all of a sudden Gemini starts screaming and growling and spinning around in circles! I’m on the floor with her in a heart-beat, trying to get her into my arms, looking for blood or anything that could be scaring her. I’m trying to talk to her to comfort her. She is NOT hearing me, nor will she allow me to hold her, she just kept growling and flailing about. ALL I could do was to make sure that she did not hit anything that would injure her and try to keep myself calm.

Finally after what seemed like forever, but was probably only minutes, Gemini’s seizure stopped and she weakly went under my bed. She still did not respond to my voice or to my out stretched hand of comfort. You just cannot imagine how heartsick I felt, here was “Mommy’s Sweet Baby Grey”, not even knowing her Mommy. I lay on the floor for 2 hours just talking to her and watching her slowly regain her strength. I could even see the recognition come into her face when it finally did!

After she had returned to normal, she came out from under the bed,” Its OK Mommy-Its OK?” Lord have mercy, I had NO Idea what I had just witnessed, how to prevent it from happening again. IF it would happen again! That was when I found out just how un-educated the local vets were when it came to birds.

My first call (after Gemini had climbed into her cage for something to eat and settled in for a nap) was to my daughter. She would be up in a short while, Gemini was her baby sister after all. Then I called every vet in a 100 mile radius to try and find out what the heck had happened! Well I could have saved the time of calling the vets, they didn’t have a clue! SO I started pulling out every bird book that I owned and I actually did find a small mention of Calcium deficiency seizures! Gemini seemed OK now, she knew me again and was talking and playing when Jamie got there. Picture of Jamie and Gemini before the seizure

Jamie of coarse went to pick her up and love on her like she always did! My heart breaks yet again , Gemini acted like she did not know Jamie! She even bit her, Jamie was crushed! Their bond was some how broken from the seizure and was never the same again! I don’t know what tore me up more, seeing my Gemini having the seizure or seeing Jamie’s reaction to Gemini not seeming to even know her anymore.

After Jamie left, I made a big batch of hand-food and fed Gemini as much as she would eat, I knew it could not hurt her and until I knew what was wrong, I was going to give her any extra nutrition etc that I could. I did not sleep much that night, beside the fact that I had to keep my eye on her for a repeat; I had to read everything that I could get my hands on and try to find out what was wrong! Gemini slept peacefully through the night, I had found a wee bit more info and had found the names of some avian vets (from Bird Talk magazine) so now I’m on a crusade to get as much info as possible!

Thank the Lord; Gemini did not have another seizure for the next couple of days. It gave me time to research and make oodles of phone calls! With the help of some “Avian Vets” across the country and my bible at the time, CLINICAL AVIAN MEDICINE and SURGERY by Harrison and Harrison, printed in 1986. I was able to rule out some very scary things that could cause her seizures. Because there were no respiratory symptoms I could rule out Paramyxovirus and Chlamydia. Also due to the lack of other symptoms, such as lethargy, depression, weakness, abnormal colored diarrhea (green or black), excessive thirst, and vomiting I could rule out Zinc or lead poisoning! That meant that Gemini could have a tumor or lesions in or on the brain-OR-something that at that time there was not a lot of clinical studies on, Hypocalcaemia!

I had been breeding birds and hand-raising babies for quite a few years before Gemini came into my life. I thought that I was doing a pretty good job of maintaining good health and nutrition with my flock! I had studied nutrition in the past. So I had been feeding my birds fruits/veggies/rice/beans (cooked 15 bean soup mix-no added seasoning packet) well cooked scrambled eggs etc-WAY before it was common to do so! I decided that before I subjected Gemini to being put under for radiograms, x-rays and ALL kinds of life threatening -in themselves tests, that I would concentrate on what was wrong with her diet that only she was effected, and how I could fix it!

I had read enough to know that high fat diets can make Calcium and iron unavailable to a birds system. I did not think that her diet was high fat. I started giving her hand-food at least once a day, and tried adding more dark yellow and green veggies more whole grains, different fruits, veggies, and even a good quality pelleted diet. Gemini would still have a small seizure every once in awhile-thank God as far as I knew I was always home for them and they happened out side the cage. It would still take her at least an hour before she regained full recognition and strength after a seizure, BUT when she did out from under the bed she would say “WHEW”! I hate to think what could have happened if she was closed up in her cage alone. I really, really, did NOT know what else to try; I did know that just giving her extra calcium could be just as dangerous as too little. I also knew that there has to be a good balance of any Vitamins/Minerals that you give a bird for it to be beneficial.

Some where, I had read about Chicken bones (WELL COOKED) being very good source’s of natural vitamins and minerals. I had to at least try it before I gave up in defeat and took Gemini 100 miles away for the tests! Gemini not only LOVED eating the marrow out of (well boiled, cooled and stripped of meat drum sticks) But God as my witness she has never had another seizure since I started giving her the chicken bone once and sometimes twice a week!!!!!! This is when Gemini started saying “Yum YUM YEMMINI”as soon as she knew she was getting a bone with her supper.

I did find out that Gemini’s condition is called Torticollis, which means curvature of the neck, much like scoliosis or curvature of the spine in human’s. And it was probably caused by vitamin/mineral mal nutrition in the parent birds. Here is an x-ray of it-its NOT Gemini but it well could have been! (click for full pic)

Now, it seems that Gemini’s seizures are under control. I’m not real sure if it was the combination of the addition of more fresh fruits and veggies and the chicken bones, or just the chicken bones, I guess it doesn’t matter because it worked and has been working for 16 years! Gemini, my daughter and I, did not quite make it through the seizure period totally unscathed. As I mentioned before the bond between my daughter and Gemini seemed to have gotten broken. It was really as if Gemini just did not know her anymore!

Gemini also seemed to outgrow her need for closeness with me. Because of her differentness, I had never forced any kind of step-up/step-down etc training on her, she was always allowed her free will. If she wanted up, she got it, if she wanted down she got it(I know shame on me).

I’m sure that Gemini loves me as dearly as I love her, but after the seizures it became quite obvious that she was not bonded to me. She saw me as another bird or flock member and for the past 15 years, I have been more then happy to be her slave(LOL).The only time she will allow anyone to handle her, is if she gets spooked and ends up on the floor, then anyone can help her up. I do have to admit though that I truly miss the cuddle sessions that her and I had, (Pre-seizures), when she had learned to say “Mommy scratch your head-Feels SOOO GOOD!”

Going back to the diet - It took a lot of research, but I did learn that the balance of vitamins and minerals is very important. I found out that a lot of African Greys that were having seizures could actually show normal levels of calcium (so adding more calcium to the diet can do more harm then good). What the real problem is, is that African Greys’ bodies cannot properly metabolize Calcium with-out proper levels of Vitamin D3 (naturally available from sunlight), and proper levels of all the other necessary vitamins and minerals. The other very important factor, especially for African Greys, is the use of proper lighting! Full spectrum lighting that has UVA and UVB is almost as important as the diet! I’m so happy to say that I personally have never again had any problems with any of my fids having seizures!

Life is going on; Gemini continues to add to her vocabulary and her personality (Lord I don’t know how many times she had me running for the answering machine. She could mimic the actual mechanics of the darn thing!). My hand raised birds are selling like crazy, and word of what I have accomplished with Gemini is really getting around! SO much so that I have become known as The Bird Lady

Gemini will be 16 this July and not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars for having her in my life, but also wonder and worry about the day that I lose her. The older she gets is like a double edge sword, I worry less because she has not had a seizure in 15 years. She has great feathering and weight. She is happy and healthy on the outside. It's what is going on inside that concerns me! If she were to actually get broody and start to lay eggs, Lord have mercy, I don’t know if her body could take that kind of calcium strain. Also I know that birds can and do get arthritis. What if she gets it in her neck? Worry- worry -worry!