African Grey is making my mother get plastic surgery after attack.

[50skittles]

I've had my bird for about 3 years and she is now 15. This morning she walked to my mother room and bit her in the lip while she was sleeping. My mother drew blood and is now needing plasitc surgery on her lip. I'm thinking of getting rid of her, this is not ok behavior. What should I do??

 

[Tami2]

I’m very sorry this happened. If she is aggressive towards your mother, than why is she allowed to be unsupervised around your mother? Unless of course this is the first time she was aggressive.
That would be indeed the 1st change I would make.

 

[Anansi]

First let me say that I am so sorry that this has happened to your mother. I imagine the damage done to her lip must be severe if she's looking at plastic surgery.

This is a tough situation. You're asking what you should do, which seems to indicate that you are as yet undecided about whether or not to re-home your grey. I guess the first thing to determine is whether or not you have a choice in the matter. Are you a minor living with your mom?

If you do decide not to re-home, there are things you can do to prevent something like this from ever happening again. I don't say this in a pointing fingers kind of way, but your bird really shouldn't be allowed to roam the house without supervision. My birds are fully flighted and allowed to fly anywhere in the house they would like (except bathrooms), but I make sure to have eyes on them wherever they go. There is just so much mischief they can get into otherwise.

I also don't know if you grey is typically a biter or if this represents a deviation from the norm. But either way you want to make sure that, in future, she does not have access to a sleeping person. There's no way to know what precipitated the bite. A sudden movement by your mom in her sleep or a shifting sheet could easily have caused a loss of balance that led to the bite. Again, supervision would prevent this. As would keeping the door of a sleeping person closed.

Remember, our birds live in our world, but they are not "born to it" so to speak. Our way of life is not natural for them. As such, we have to adapt our lifestyles around them at least as much as they have to adapt their behavior around us.

My best wishes toward your mother's swift and complete recovery. Please keep us updated.

 

[EllenD]

Well-stated answers above...I think in-order to help you we need a lot more information about your bird's normal behavior and routines while in your house...Is this the first time he has bitten someone/your mother like this, or is this something he does often? Is he allowed to walk around the house unsupervised whenever/wherever he wants? Does he get ample out-of-cage time and interaction with you/people in the house every single day?

If this was only a one-time-thing and/or he was roaming the house unsupervised and allowed to just walk into your mom's room while she was sleeping, then this is something that could easily remedied and not something that I would ever consider rehoming my bird over. Ultimately a Grey is very much like having a 4-5 year old human toddler in your house, so you have to think of him that way...

 

[chris-md]

Stephen really hit the nail on the head here, and so eloquently stated what was screaming in my mind as I was reading your post: how on earth was a parrot allowed to wander unsupervised to the point it was able to get into the room, climb the bed and bite a sleeping person?

I feel like this is a situation where simply an ounce of prevention is all that’s necessary. Rehoming the bird really shouldn’t be necessary. Just keep a closer eye on it. Parrots out of cage, like toddlers, should never be left alone.