Hi I”m Hope, I'm a 25 yr old blind Scarlet Macaw,my hatch day is Oct 24^th, 1984. Since I am blind I always just let Mom tell my story for me.

One Sunday after noon John was browsing the classifieds at birds for sale and finds an ad for a blind GW. Well the push overs we are we call and head right out to see her. John is the first one to see her and I hear him say “Scarlet”. I said a GW named Scarlet,he said no she's a Scarlet. Well you can tell that she is not in the best situation so we pay the ransom the lady is asking and head towards home. She is in a small cat carrier so after we are under way John removes the lid so she has a little more room. Then we find out how bad it really is. The smell coming from her is awful,her face patch is covered in scratches from her razor nails,most of her feathers are either gone or dried up and dead, and her naked skin is covered with little puss bumps. We get her home and I seal the room she is in up tighter then I ever have for any other bird. You can tell by the fact her tail is in a J shape she was in the cat carrier a lot longer then the ride home. I know all she has been eating is sunflower seeds and peanuts, so I go buy some of them,I figure I really don't want her to stop eating now. I really believe in my mind she isn't going to make it,but I hope and that is where her name came from. First thing the next morning I call my vet and she is on a plane to Texas. It is decided I will find another vet locally to draw the blood and do gram stains so the results will be back by Friday when she is back in town. I call around all day and finally find a vet that will see her,so off we go. We get to the vets and when she comes in the room she wants to know her history. I told her I wouldn't believe anything the woman told me about her. She asks why and I said because of her condition and the fact that the lady thought she was a GW and she was really a Scarlet. Okay if you are drinking swallow before reading on: She replied maybe she was a GW before she started plucking!!!!! Oh my, all could do was laugh as I packed Hope up and left,there was no way I was letting her touch her. I called my vets tech and told him the situation and told him that I needed to get her started on meds asap.I told him what I wanted and he called the vet in TX to get the dosage info and brought them to my house. The next day I took Hope in and while I held her he drew the blood for testing. The vet was back on Friday and after looking at the gram stains and blood work she said if I hadn't started meds when I did she would not have made it. Her body was over run with bacteria and yeast,but nothing told us what was wrong with her skin. The vet pulled a couple feathers and drained a few bumps and sent them off to a pathologist. It showed she had Malassia yeast,the pathologist has never seen it in a bird before. He asked for more samples to study and that would cover his fee. It took a couple tries with meds to get it under control,but we finally did. The entire time this was going on I kept her sealed up tight. When ever I went in her room I dropped all my clothes at the door and anything I took in there for her stayed in there. All trash went out the window and was picked up by a birdless friend who didn't come in the house. As soon as I left her room I went straight to the shower and bleached myself and her dishes. This went on 5-6 times a day for about 2 months. Some days were very hard,I was doing all the physical work to get her better,but MT was giving all the love,support and prayers both Hope and I needed to get thru it. She had to go to the vets every week to have more bumps drained and a few dead feathers at a time pulled. After all the bumps were drained I started pulling her feathers at home in the shower,I figured less pain and less stress on her. After everything was cleared up we had to set out to work on her diet. It was a very long road,but I can so remember each day that she tried something new. We slowly introduced toys to her and set her cage up to accommodate her blindness. She gets toys I would give a med size bird,because she isn't a big chewer. She adores birdie bagels to shred. The only thing special about her toys is they are never rotated to new spots and they are always hung the same length. The same for her perches and food dishes they are never moved. When I started Hope on different foods I loaded what ever I was offering her with sunflower seeds. I figured she would have to pick thru to get what she wanted. I would say it took about 2 months to get her to eat most everything I offered. It took the longest for nuts in the shell,that took about 6 months and still to this day she will only crack walnuts and almonds. The weird thing about her eating habits,she won't eat anything red. Why I have no idea and she is truly 100% blind. When she first came here she also had to learn what bedtime was. She had no concept of it getting dark and would make noise all night long. At the time I covered all my birds, so I started covering here too. I figured the act of covering her cage would be a new sound to signify it was time for bed. It worked and when we moved to our new house and I stopped covering the other birds I stopped covering her too and she is still quite at night. She was also the first one to settle down in our new house, because she couldn't see the house was different. To her we all did was go for a ride and come back home. I always tell her everything I'm going to do it before I do it, so I don't startle her. If I have to have a sitter I tell them not to talk to her if she is in reach of their hands, because she will react to a new voice. She has taught me to notice different sounds I might have normally not paid any attention too. And I follow her lead as to what sounds bother her. She isn't overly found of leaving the safe haven of her cage, so when she comes out I always stay close to her cage, so the sounds stay the same for her. I would say for the most part after living with her for a little over 5 yrs I probably often forget she is blind because it is just second nature now. It was a very long and hard struggle,but I would do it all again in a heartbeat,because everyone needs a little Hope:) My Aunt sent me a little figurine that says "Hope is the thing with feathers,That perches in the soul" I think everyone that knows her would agree.