Make My Day Camp: PSA: Carpet Cleaning and Birds

Friday, April 19, 2024

PSA: Carpet Cleaning and Birds

Quick PSA for today's post - we had our carpets cleaned and it did not occur to me that it might be harmful for birds until I walked back into the house a couple hours after they were done and the smell was SO strong. I immediately thought to myself "I wonder if this is harmful..." and Googled it - sure enough it can be very toxic to birds! And poor Lucy our parrot was sitting nearby rooms that were done. I panicked of course, got her into a room away from carpet and just kept an eye on her, she was fine the rest of that day but the next morning she had a spell of sorts, like she was frozen or something and she fell out of the cage! Not tripped out, but tumbled out. I freaked.

(Sorry, I probably should have started this post with the fact that she is ok now in case you were worried this story was going to end badly.)

I picked her up and put her on the counter, it took a few minutes but eventually she was walking around and climbing on her cage, ate breakfast and seemed ok once again. I called the vet and they didn't know what would cause her to freeze up like that but if it was a reaction to the chemicals they would expect her to show respiratory issues and I should just keep her away from the carpet areas for a few days and continue to monitor her. It's been a couple days and so far so good - but I wanted to warn anyone with a bird and dirty carpets that you should tell the cleaners that you have a bird, there are other solutions they can use; or remove the bird before having them cleaned. So scary!