F#&@ing Parrots!

In this episode of Vet Life, Dr. Cliff Redford shares insights from his busy week, including the challenges of editing his book and the amusing antics of foul-mouthed parrots at a wildlife sanctuary. He discusses a recent wildlife rehabilitation case involving a raccoon and answers listener questions about cat mites and their potential effects on humans. The conversation highlights the humorous and serious aspects of veterinary medicine, showcasing the unique experiences of a veterinarian.

First, if you haven't watched my film and live in Canada (or have one of those VPN things), you can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/oMUx3yuyznc?si=oagpg7bGnpbuyXlJ

Be sure to follow me on Instagram @drcliffworldwidevet.com and on Twitter at @drcliff_vet
Listener questions, episode suggestions, or if you have a good idea for a guest, email me at dr.redford@vet905.com
Additional information can be found at drcliff.ca

Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:08)

Hey everyone, welcome to vet life with me, Dr. Cliff. So this is going to be a fast episode. ⁓ partially because I had a kind of a cancellation on a guest, but it's kind of good. They canceled cause I am swamped. am, I'm up against a deadline. ⁓ and I deadline for editing my book. it'll be the, guess this is arguably the third edit I'm doing. The other ones were more just like cutting out, ⁓ trimming the fat, shortening it up.

Um, it's still like 300 pages though. Um, so I don't know if they're going to want it to even more lean, but, uh, I pride myself on getting things done before deadlines, uh, and not missing deadlines. So I don't want to, uh, I don't want to start off my relationship. My first deadline with Jen, the editor over at ECW, um, on a bad foot. So I've been, uh, I've been busy doing that, um, today and I'm going to be doing it, uh, late into the evening, probably.

I'm basically rewriting the last few chapters about my trip to Ukraine, to Kharkiv. I'm not really happy with how it turned out. So I'm just making some more personal adjustments about some of the animals and some of the people that I became close to when I was ⁓ down there or over there. ⁓ So we're going to talk just about a few interesting cases, a funny story out of the UK ⁓ and answer a...

question someone sent me on Instagram. ⁓ And yeah, so this week we had, had a great day at Shades of Hope this week. When I say we, because the future Dr. Mohan, Ananya Mohan, she's a final year vet student at a Guelph that is doing a two month placement at Wellington Vet Hospital, two months with me. So I'm going to try really hard to be a good mentor.

she seems to be enjoying it. The first week has been excellent. And when we, I took her to shades of hope when we ended up, we saw a bunch of cool cases, but we ended up, ⁓ pinning the broken humorous, no, I'm sorry, femur. Let me think. Yes, it was the femur. Big difference. Broken femur on a bird of some sort. It was tiny. A Kestrel. There we go. And I remember.

⁓ so I got to teach her how we use intrabadullary pins and how we measure the IM space, the space between sort of within the hollow of the bone. And then we use that to determine the size of the pin. It's usually about 60%. and then we push it up through the fracture, through the hip, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You can find, you can find some information on that on Instagram soon. There's going to be a post about it at drcliffworldwidevet.

⁓ but the other cool thing now, unfortunately, Ananya missed this. She was not coming in on Friday. ⁓ just a couple of days ago. ⁓ and at last minute I got a call from, ⁓ a another animal, a wildlife rehabber, not shades of hope. ⁓ or I guess they had messaged Gail at shades of hope who messaged me. And she basically said, Hey cowboy, we got this. calls me cowboy. which is cool.

Oh, so the, cowboy, we got this, uh, this animal, this raccoon rescuer, uh, that works with this other rehabber and, this, this poor mama raccoon, she's probably a teenage mom. She's pretty young. Uh, she did have two little, uh, two little kits, two little babies with her, uh, that were probably five or six months or weeks old, still nursing. She had, uh, it looks like she'd gotten her paw, her front paw, basically the three.

outer digits, like the pinky ring and middle finger trapped in likely a wire snare. So some jerkwad out there had set up a wire snare and maybe they're looking to catch a raccoon. Maybe they're looking to catch a coyote. We've got a lot of problems with coyotes ⁓ in Southern Ontario right now. ⁓ Or maybe they're trying to catch something else or who knows? They were just figuring we'll catch who we catch. ⁓ And ⁓ it basically tore apart her fingers.

⁓ halfway up to what's called P two. ⁓ basically between the, ⁓ last and second last knuckle, is P two. ⁓ so I had to finish off the job. had to amputate the remnants of bone that were still in there just so that only P one, ⁓ was basically where your ring, let's say where your ring sits. That is considered P one between those two knuckles.

So, she did very, very well. ⁓ mama's doing well. The kits are doing well. ⁓ and she's going to go to this rehab or for, ⁓ probably a couple of weeks for everything to heal up and for her to sort of put on a bit of weight and also just to learn how to, how to handle with her new, ⁓ abilities or, or lack of abilities. ⁓ she's uniquely able, ⁓ but she still has her opposing thumb. She still has her.

Peter pointer, so her index finger, ⁓ and she'll do, she'll do fine. ⁓ but that was, that was a really interesting case. And boy, do I love working with, ⁓ these, these wildlife rehabbers. ⁓ and sorry, Ananya, if you're miss listening that you missed it, ⁓ you were pretty pumped out when you came in yesterday on Saturday. ⁓ but, ⁓ you know, there'll be plenty of opportunities. ⁓ Wellington is definitely not a boring place to work. It's not like your average.

veterinary clinic. And so, yeah, so that's sort of how the week went. Super busy, a lot of fun and me struggling to get this deadline done. That's what the life of a vet is. So we talked about it on Vet Life with Dr. Cliff. So this other, this story out of the UK is about these...

Five vulgar parrots. ⁓ So five parrots were separated at a zoo for swearing and laughing at visitors. ⁓ So I got this off the Inside History ⁓ Instagram page and then followed up with some research. Talks here about five parrots at a UK zoo had to be separated after their foul mouth behavior started causing a commotion among visitors. The African, the African, ⁓ ugh.

The African gray parrots, famous for their talent at mimicking human speech, were caught swearing repeatedly at guests, then laughing together as if they were in on the joke. They're egging each other on. Staff at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, LWP, said the parrots, the birds seem to be encouraging one another, escalating their inappropriate language whenever someone passed by. While the zookeepers initially found it funny,

The parrot's synchronized swearing soon became too much, especially for families with young children. To restore a more family-friendly atmosphere, the zoo made the decision to separate the cheeky birds, placing them in different enclosures. The hope is that without their little comedy crew feeding off each other, they'll drop the swearing and maybe pick up some more polite phrases instead. As one staff member put it, it's like having five naughty school kids

who all discovered the same bad word and just can't stop saying it. And then it's pretty funny. And then I found some videos on YouTube and unfortunately they had everything, what's it called? Like bleeped out. So I couldn't actually get to see the fun stuff, but bear with me one second here.

just moving some stuff around so I can read this funny thing that let's see if I can just

No, I don't want to close that. would, that would be a bummer. Let me see. How am I going to do this? ⁓ it looks like I can read it. So there's this giant billboard outside these, this, the, the enclosure, the parrot enclosure, the infamous swearing parrots. And it's like all graffitied up and whatnot. ⁓ and they got these five pictures, black and white pictures made to look like, mug shots. And they've got,

Yeah, LWP mugshots. They've got Jade, Elsie, Billy. Billy's in the center. He's probably the main troublemaker. Eric and Tyson. And then it says, warning, we cannot be held responsible for what you hear. For your information, every common swear word can be heard in this aviary. So please be aware if you have people with you of a sensitive nature. Back in September, 2020, a group of five African grays arrived at the park.

donated from various locations around the UK. There wasn't anything unusual in that. We thought as we take in parrots here all year round and African grays are by far the most common. However, while in the first stage of quarantine, our staff noticed something a little unusual. We are used to the odd parrot arriving with a few choice words in their vocabulary, but this was different. All five had their own repertoire of blue language. I guess that's a British thing.

⁓ naughty words and within a very short time, it sounded like we, ⁓ it sounded like the old man's working club. ⁓ and then you can't read the rest of it, but, ⁓ I think, ⁓ yeah, these guys are infamous and I'm sure they've actually, ⁓ increased the, the number of tourists coming to this, ⁓ coming to this wildlife little zoo. So, check out this little, post coming up, with the audio from this, and, ⁓

you can you can tell you can tell what some of these blue language words are ⁓ in between the beeping is pretty funny

Dr. Cliff Redford (10:20)

Happy birthday to you! With this jolly jingle and a warm welcome, you'd be forgiven for thinking these colourful creatures are the stars of this wildlife sanctuary on England's East Coast. But look a little further and you'll find the real VIPs. Here we go. These parrots can squawk some of the saltiest swear words this side of the seven seas, persecuting visitors and staff alike.

I heard that. As I'm walking past, I might hear a parrot say, you fat bee. And you think, ⁓ that's not really good. I don't really want that. And then one will just tell you to F off. But then when you walk past and somebody uses a C word or something like that, and you think, my lord, that is a bit too much. Their swearing has shot these parrots to international stardom.

with fans flocking to hear England's famous foul-mouthed birds.

I'm not offended, sorry. Don't bother me at all. You're not offended, are you? No, no. Not easily offended. No. To be honest, when they're mixing with the other parrots, I think they'll probably just stop swerving with a bit of luck and be like parrots should be. All behave yourself. Thankfully the staff are just as entertained as the visitors. You can never tell them not to because, ⁓ we laugh too much at it. The public love it as well when they come up.

and the parrots are talking to them and they tell them to go and go somewhere. The laughs that you get, you can hear them across the park, which is just, it's really nice to hear. Blame lies with five particularly profane parrots. Sanctuary CEO Steve took them in from private homes during the COVID pandemic. To his surprise, all five could swear. Concerned they'd ruffle a few feathers, Steve hatched a plan. We integrated them to a bigger group of parrots.

And most parrots, they learn all the common noises like vehicles reversing or microwaves or you can hear like telephone noises. And the general idea was if these rogue parrots heard more of the common noises, they'd stop using the swear words. It didn't really work. There was one or two of them that picked up the swear words. ⁓ These highly intelligent African greys are quick learners.

And with another sound now picking up steam, Steve has a new problem on his hands. People teach them farting noises and they do it at the most inopportune times. And I can hear them and they'll do everything from a very short noise to a really long noise. Then his head starts bobbing and he starts laughing at himself and walks away. And you think, no, not another one. So between swearing and farting, I don't know if it's a good place to bring your kids.

To Steve's relief, the parents across the sanctuary are still PG.

They're yet to pick up the profanities, but they do hear their naughty neighbours are very funny. ⁓

Dr. Cliff Redford (13:30)

That was hilarious that then they started doing farting noises. Um, I would, uh, I'd like to get one of these guys. Uh, I should go interview them one day. Uh, I'm to try real hard to see if we can find it for another, uh, another episode of, can actually find some of the, uh, unedited unbleeped out, uh, blue language words, the cheeky words that these, these infamous swearing parrots are saying. Um, so that was a little light, lighthearted humor there.

All right. Now the last one, a little story here. So I got this great question. Someone had reached out to me on Instagram. Let me find it here. Mr. John.

So he follows me. don't know if I follow him. I don't think I do. Maybe I should start doing it. So he wrote, Hey, Clifford, I have a question about my cat regarding cat mites. First of all, I love that he was just open and honest about it. Hey, I got a question. Do you mind? And I said, okay, ask away. So he wrote, I have an appointment to have my cat checked for mites this week. I think he was exposed and ⁓ I think.

He was exposed and I feel like I've been getting affected by them. Like they're getting on me. I wonder if you've ever heard of this happening. I thought it was coincidental at first, but it's been very consistent. And I wrote, ⁓ so actually this is a human medical question. The funny emoji. ⁓ and then I guess I scanned it sort of, no, not, guess I did. I didn't read it carefully because I went on and start talking about ear mites and he never actually said ear mites. I'm just realizing that now he just said mites.

So I wrote, first off, ear bites are very rare in healthy adult cats. They can jump onto people, but have no reason to. They're happy where they are. Our immune systems kill them regardless. And I wanted to tell, didn't, tell him it would take too long, but there was this interesting story, probably the early nineties. I think it was right about when I got into vet school and it was probably before then, but it was a veterinarian here in, ⁓ in Canada.

And he wanted to see if humans when infected by otodectes cyanides, which is the ear mite that affects, ⁓ cats. ⁓ if, if people, when they're affected, infected with otodectes, do we develop an immune response? And he couldn't really do a study. So he couldn't get a proper article in any sort of medical journal.

So instead he wrote a letter to the editor and got it within like letter to the editor section. Um, and basically he took, he found a cat or a group of cats with ear mites and he scooped out with a Q-tip a certain volume. Let's say it's one gram of black dried gunk, which is basically dried blood and ear mite poop.

They eat blood, so it is digested blood and a bunch of ear mites. And when we put that under the microscope, you can actually see them swimming around. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy. And one of the most common Instagram posts that veterinarians seem to like to post, cause it's straight out of some, ⁓ 1950s sci-fi film, this giant ear mite, when it's looked close up on, on 10 time magnification. he, so he took this 10 grams or whatever, and he stuck it in his ear.

And he goes on in the article describing how he could automatically immediately hear them crawling around inside his ear canal. And he could hear them chewing, ⁓ chewing on his skin, chewing on each other, chewing on his ear drum. was getting like, this sort of weird sensation to his ear drum. and while it was majorly annoying, but only mildly painful, just sort of irritating.

⁓ that was about it. Now, all he did to, to air quotes, treat it was wash it with water. He did not want to sort of, ⁓ utilize any sort of medication, that might affect his immune response. And so he's just washing with water just to get the debris out. And he goes on to describe how at night he could feel them crawling across his face. Now you would think that maybe he's just sort of, it's in his head, but I'm pumped.

⁓ they literally were in his head. ⁓ is it literally just sort of, he's just imagining it, but then he started to have the same sensations in the other ear, but to a much lesser degree. Eventually days, I don't know. ⁓ everything stopped and everything seemed fine. So he thinks he got rid of them and he sort of cataloged the number of days that this happened. And then he did the same thing. He took a gram or whatever it was of this.

ear mite crap and he stuck it in the opposing ear. And he found that the response, the clearing of the ear mites was reduced significantly. Therefore, according to him, humans develop an immune response and can become immune. That's all he could tell. Now, most people would say, this is pretty ridiculous. I do not condone this kind of behavior. ⁓ I do not.

⁓ discourage veterinarians from being a little bit, ⁓ goofy. And, ⁓ I mean, I box, I let people punch me in the face. ⁓ but, this is, this is, this is a little bit much, certainly not scientific. However, imagine like those 1950s sci-fi movies one day our, our planet is struck by a meteor shower with, and the meteors contain, you know, giant car size.

ear mite type aliens, ⁓ maybe him having the studies that he did, we could pull blood from him and, and maybe we'd all become immune to their poison or something. Who knows? ⁓ my odds are that's not going to happen though. ⁓ but there you go. So that was, that was what always reminds me when he talks about can humans be, be, ⁓ be affected by this. ⁓ now in the end I said, maybe it is sarcoptic mites, which causes scabies.

Um, they can bite us. And then he goes, yes, that's what I think he was exposed to is sarcoptic mites. Cause duh, Dr. Cliff, I never actually said ear mites. He doesn't say that, but he should have. And I was asking as a genera genuine curiosity, if you've ever seen a case where they did bite us from a cat sounds like, yeah. Great content by the way. I said, your mites are different than sarcoptic mites, but yes, sarcoptic mites can chew on us. And he said, thanks. He's probably going, dude, I never said ear mites. Um, I'm to have to message him.

I will, after this, I'll say, ⁓ I'm so sorry. I read this on the podcast and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm a big dummy. I sometimes get impatient. ⁓ but sarcoptic mites, so scabies, mange, most people sort of just mange, but there's different types of mange, but most people are talking about sarcoptic mange. They, they're the ones that make the coyotes look all, ⁓ mangy, where the there's fur loss and there's scaly skin and then they get secondary skin infections.

And it can, it can affect dogs, especially if their immune system's weak. It can affect cats, but not to the same degree. But there was a case, so this is, uh, this is personal sort of, or at least I was involved. I was doing my rotation, my dermatology rotation in the spring of 1998. I had already passed my North American vet licensing exam at university at Guelph. So I was just finishing off my four months. Um, and generally having a good time because I knew I was going to be a veterinarian.

And, uh, was doing dermatology with Wendy Parker and we didn't have many cases and this dog had come in with a skin condition and scar, sarcoptic mites can be a little bit tricky to diagnose. Um, or some vets just want to turf it and refer it to a specialist. And I remember there's a three students, um, and one of my classmates was sort of, uh, championing the case. was his case. And it was this little old lady who came in with her dog and her dog looked pretty mangy.

And we're just asking the general questions and my classmate who's in charge of the case asks her, have you had any bites Mrs. Jones? And this little old lady, she's probably eight years old, which means she was probably like late fifties and we were kids. were in our twenties. So everyone looked a lot older, obviously. Anyways, this little old lady says to that question about, you been bitten? Do you have any bites on you, any lesions on you? She says, boy, do I.

Look at this and she proceeded to lift her shirt up where thank goodness she was wearing a bra. She lifted her shirt up and on her belly, maybe in between her breasts, cause they tend to drop down with gravity. ⁓ sorry, dad, if this is annoying you, ⁓ but in on her belly were all of these welts and red spots and, well, there you go. okay, Mrs. Jones, you can put your shirt down now. We're pretty sure we know what's going on. And now technically those are not.

bites, those are actually dead mites. the sarcoptic mites burrow into your skin or into the animal's skin and live just below the dermis, below the cuticles. What layer do they, I think it's like just below the epidermis or the dermis. don't know. Someone please tell me. And, they just hang out there and they breed and they cause all kinds of problems and they cause irritation and infections and scabs.

But with us, they go into our skin and our immune system does get rid of them. Just like that veterinarian back in the eighties figured out with ododectes with your mites. Um, so we actually get these little dry sort of pimply things, uh, on our skin. And those are basically the coffins of dead sarcoptic mange mites. Um, so I'm going to have to message this guy and apologize for being impatient, but, uh, it was a great question. Uh, Mr. John, thank you very much.

And everyone please send me, send me more questions and I hope you enjoyed this nice brief episode of vet life with Dr. Cliff. Be kind to animals, be kind to everybody else, be kind to yourself, be kind to these swearing parrots. ⁓ And my father would wag his finger at them and say, you know, you shouldn't swear with children and women present, but you probably shouldn't swear with anyone present. He would then add, I think that's what he used to say. ⁓

⁓ and, ⁓ be kind to sarcoptic mites. It's not their fault. They're just trying to live their life. ⁓ and if they bite you or if they burrow into you, they're going to die anyways. So, ⁓ there you go. Have a great day. Cheers. Bye.