Where Do I Get a Bird?

I still remember when pet stores sold puppies and kittens that lived piled up on top of each other in glass cages for everybody to see. And while yes, a pile of puppies may sound like one of the cutest sights you’ll ever see, it’s actually pretty sad and disturbing. One of my old roommates once brought home a kitten from a pet store and the poor thing was obviously not right in the head. So I wasn’t at all surprised when that kind of thing got banned. But I got my childhood budgies at a pet store, and I got my snake there, as well as the rat and fish that I had for a while between those two. I wanted to know if the animals they are still allowed sell in stores are healthy and happy or if they are more akin to the victims of Cruella De Vil. I found this article by the Avian Welfare Resource Center that basically says there’s still a lot of grey in that area.

I did go check out all the pet stores in Victoria anyway, to see what their birds looked like. I was extremely disappointed with what I found, even with the stores that were really highly rated online. I’m not going to name names here because that was a year ago and things may have changed, but I wasn’t about to buy a bird, or anything else, from any one of them.

I also scouted Craigslist and Usedvictoria quite a bit. There were always a few budgies listed for sale, but since I don’t have a car it was too impractical for me to go to check any of them out.

The SPCA puts pictures and descriptions of all the animals that they are currently looking for homes for on their website. At the time they had these three blue male baby budgies named Bipity, Bopity, and Boo. According to their adoption guidelines , the SPCA will only let birds go to people who can give them photo evidence that they have a cage all set up and ready for them when they get home. That made sense to me so I took the first big step towards getting a budgie and bought a cage, seed, cuttlebones, and a few toys, so that I would be ready to bring home a baby bird when I found the right one.

The one place I hadn’t scouted yet was Petsmart because they’re an hour bus ride from my house. However I did visit their website pretty much daily to fantasy shop for toys. They have a bit of good information in their “Bird Education Center” too. Especially this checklist that everyone should consider carefully before deciding to bring a bird home with them.