Just to add a quick story that might help you get through this and feel a little better about it, I went through a very similar situation a few years ago with my first Green Cheek Conure, Izzy...I had gotten Izzy from a great breeder about 2 and a half hours away from my home...At the time I had only a few of my breeder-Budgies left, and no other birds...In fact, I had gone years without having a pet parrot, not since I was 24 and my almost 19 year-old Budgie passed-away...The CAG that I grew-up with lives with my mom and stepfather, so he was my bird, they're only 10 minutes away...So I finally decided I wanted to bring home a baby of my own, and I decided on a Green Cheek...And I found Izzy at 10 weeks old...She was a gorgeous Cinnamon-Turquoise Green Cheek, and was a little sweetie...I brought her home, and a few months later I also brought home Lita, my Blue Quaker...
I had Izzy for about 4-5 months, and she and Lita got along well...Then one day I was taking a shower and Izzy was sitting on the shower rod like she always did when I was in the shower...However, this day she was sitting on a wet washcloth I had thrown over the shower rod...Well, one minute I'm talking to her, and the next I see the washcloth slide off of the shower rod, and I heard the most horrible, disgusting "thump" I've ever heard...I opened the shower curtain and saw only a wet washcloth with a lump underneath it that wasn't moving...Basically the wet washcloth slid off of the shower rod and right on top of Izzy, and it was too heavy for her to fly out from underneath, and it caused her to hit the floor like a boulder...She was alive, but it was obvious her wing was broken...It was Saturday, of course, so I got dressed and rushed her to the 24/7 Exotic Animal Hospital 10 minutes from my house, and they diagnosed a broken wing...They gave her Metacam and splinted her wing, but her x-ray otherwise looked normal...She started to come around while at the Hospital, she was quite stunned and had just been clinging to my shirt/chest since it happened, no screaming or crying, just horrible silence from her and she was just staring at me constantly, like "What happened mama?"...Broke my heart, I'm tearing-up right now writing this again...Well I brought her home and was already all set-up to take her to my CAV first thing Monday morning...But Sunday morning she was gone...He did a necropsy for me, well started to, but as soon as he started to open her belly he saw a ton of free-blood in her abdomen, so she had died of an internal injury/bleeding that the Vet at the Hospital hadn't seen (my CAV saw it right away on the original x-ray, which pissed me off, but I obviously don't think that this same Exotic Vet doing surgery on her would have ended well anyway)...So that was that, and both Lita and I were devastated...
And then just a couple of months later, like 2 months or less late, it was quick...I had run to the Petco here to pick-up a bottle of Repashy Calcium-Plus, which is the Calcium/Multi-Vitamin combo I give my Bearded Dragon, and they were out. Of course, that's what I was thinking, and I was pissed because you can't just switch them to another Multi-Vitamin powder, they won't eat their bugs when they're dusted in a new one right away, the same thing as switching your bird's pellets suddenly...So I had them call the Petco in Altoona to see if they had any in stock, they did, so I had them put a bottle of it behind the counter for me, and I made the 30 minute drive to Altoona...
The Petco in Altoona is brand new, is massive, and is so much nicer than the one in State College (our Petco is pathetic, small, and they don't have a fraction of the stuff the Altoona one has)...So when I got there I paid for the Repashy right away, then decided to walk around and look at their massive aquarium and reptile sections...And I kept hearing this bird yelling from across the store the entire time. He was loud, but it was almost like he was calling to me, I swear he was...I hadn't even seen him, but he just kept making this really distinct yelling sound that I noticed right away and couldn't ignore or shake...I don't believe in things like this, I really don't...But I finally walked over to the other side of the store to the birds, and this Petco employee sees me looking for this bird that's making the noise, and she says "Did you see the Canary-Winged Parakeet we have? The BeeBee?", and I asked if that was the bird making that yelling sound, and she said yes, "hang-on", and she came back with this adorable little baby Beebee Parakeet that was molting badly, lol, poor little guy was a mess...She put him on my finger, and I was looking at him, nothing really hit me, then the yelling started again!!! I said "There it is again, that yelling! It's not this guy, who is doing that?". (Turns out that they were pushing that poor BeeBee Parrot because he'd been there forever and he was like half-price, the girl told me this after the fact)....She said "Oh, I think that's the little "Fancy" Green Cheek Conure we just got-in. He just got here last night, and he's not settled-in yet, we can't even get near him yet, which is typical when we first get them, it usually takes about a week"...I asked where he was, and she walked around this huge, round thing that has all of their bird cages in it, tons of Sun and Jendays, Cockatiels, the BeBe, and ton of Green Cheek Conures, and finally the loud-mouth, that did in-fact say "Hand-fed Fancy Green Cheek Conure".....He was just a little tiny baby, and he ran from the back of his "tank" and came right up to the glass holding a pellet in one foot, chomping on it while staring at me intently...So I kept talking to him, and it was bizarre but he kept running as fast as he could back to the back of the tank to grab another pellet, then he'd run right back up to the glass, then sit and chomp on the pellet in one foot while staring at me and while i kept talking to him...She came back and I asked if I could see him, and she said "He bites right now. But I'll open up the back wall of his tank so you can see him...So she got a key and opened the back up, pulled his tank out, and opened the back of it...He was very lightly clipped, so when she went to grab him, he flew out of the tank and was gliding towards the floor when I did the "Parrot-Grab", and he was suddenly on my finger, and i put him right up to my face, his beak against my nose, I kissed his beak and he chirped, and I started stroking his face saying "He's a good little boy, he's fine...". And this Petco employee was freaked out, she thought he was going to take out my eye or bite my nose off, but we just stood there in the middle of the store giving kisses and talking quietly to each other...
And his name is Bowie...
I'm so sorry. I suppose the one blessing (if you can call it that), is that you cannot blame yourself for what happened. If you had brought her home, and you had been the one to find her, that would have been even worse...
