I'm posting this for everyone out there who has a bird. It's must know info.
During a recent fruit fly outbreak here in the house, my daughter hung a fly-stick in the hallway. I made a mental note when I saw it that it was in a risky location and I should move it but got busy and forgot. Night before last while I was walking through the hall with my two macaws to put them to bed, Loki began flapping his wings and one of them hit the fly-stick which glued instantly to his wing. He of course, freaked out and snatched his wing back and promptly glued the stick, and his wing...to his tail. I cannot begin to describe the chaos and mess that followed. The sticky goo was all over him and every time he moved it got somewhere else. He also got it in my hair because in his panic, he climed up on top of my head. I'm sure we were quite a sight.
Anyway, I went to the computer and quickly GOOGLED "bird + fly paper" and bam! The first hit was instructions on how to get fly paper glue off of your bird. Evidently this is a semi-common event because bird owners don't want to use toxic chemicals to get rid of the inevitable fruit flies. Here's what to do...
Vegetable oil will remove the glue. Dip your fingers in vegetable oil and thoroughly rub it into the feathers (be sure to rub in the direction the feathers grow), until you feel the glue begin to dissolve. When the glue has been saturated in the vegetable oil, put the bird into a warm bath or shower and wash the oil off using Dawn dish detergent. If you don't have Dawn, any detergent will do but Dawn works best. You must wash away all of the oil because the oil will render the feathers useless as insulation. Then dry the bird in a warm location. I routinely dry my birds with a blow dryer so they're used to that. Just make sure it doesn't get too hot.
Thank goodness, this worked like a charm and got all of the sticky stuff off of him. I was lucky that it wasn't in his mouth. It's not toxic but can glue their tongue and mouth and be life threatening.
I work in a vet clinic that routinely treats birds and none of our vets were familiar with this potential disaster or the solution. We now have a big bottle of vegetable oil at the clinic just in case!
