Too Cold!

Sometimes I wonder at customers....like what they're thinking. 

I had a customer come into the store today with a bird cage.
The birds still within. 

Which usually means an animal return. 

Except one of the birds within....was dead.

The customer was returning the birds because they'd bought four within the past two weeks....and three of them had died. 

And the living one...that was stuck in the same cage as it's dead buddy...
Wasn't looking much better. 

The bird was all puffed up and such, which puffed up birds when not sleeping is never a good sign.

Of course the customer wanted to know what was wrong.
Like why did they have three of their four birds die?!!?

-Me I was also concerned why they decided to bring the dead bird IN the CAGE?! Like why not wrap it up in a box or something? Why subject the live bird to the stress of having his dead buddy still in the cage?! 

The live bird itself wasn't looking much better. 
All puffed up and semi-lethargic in it's movements. 

I've seen the birds puff up like that before when they're not feeling well.

And knowing how cold it's been recently...
I asked the customer.

"How warm are you keeping your home?" 

They didn't understand at first. So I changed the question. "What temperature is your house at?" 

They told me they were keeping their house at 64 degrees.

*exhales*

There is the likely culprit right there. 

Animals, especially smaller animals like birds and lizards and hamsters...don't do well in cooler temperatures. Like bigger cats and dogs and people can.

That's why we recommend keeping the animals in the seventies.

Because too cold and they can get sick and die. Too hot and they can again get sick and die. 

So the birds that this customer had?
Probably got too cold, maybe caught some sort of illness from being too cold, and died from that.

As we recommend not keeping birds in drafty areas for that very reason. 

So after telling the customer to go warm up their house I took the birds -to isolate the one that was still alive and get it to a vet, and take care of the deceased one. 

Thankfully our vet that sees birds was in today.
So I was able to take the bird over quickly so we could see if there was anything wrong with him.

Though I'm still leaning towards the bird being too cold.
Because even in the little time in our care the parakeet already was looking better in the warmer environment. 

So hopefully this parakeet makes it.
And hopefully the customer makes their house much warmer if they decide they want the parakeet back if it recovers. 

Guess we'll see. 

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi