Injured parrot works to adapt to his 3-D leg

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pete’s screams alerted Benjamin Spalding to a crisis in the backyard. A fox had grabbed the 34year-old mealy Amazon parrot as he was climbing up the side of his aviary and had torn off his left foot.

Mr. Spalding and his wife, Stacey Gehringer, of Allentown, wasted no time in getting Pete to Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital, where La’Toya Latney, service head and attending clinician in exotic companion animal medicine, and the emergency team were waiting.

Dr. Latney and the team worked to stop the bleeding and provide fluid therapy for their patient. Then they sedated Pete to tend to hiswounds. His left leg was severed midway below the knee and he had a small woundon his chest.

The group, which now included Stephen Smeltzer, digital fabrication manager at PennDesign’s fabrication lab, and Gregory Kaiman, a fourthyear student, set out to create a prosthetic leg. The group also needed to figure out how to attach the prosthetic so that Pete, a type of parrot that can live 60 years or more, would be comfortable.

The initial prototypes had the look of a real parrot foot, but could not support Pete’s weight. The next set of prosthetics, which resembled walking boots,were more stable.

Pete “didn’t bite at it, he didn’t try to tear away at it,” Dr. Latney said. “At points when he felt stable, he would actually bear weight on it.”

But the leg slipped off when Pete lifted it, so the design team had to go back to the drawing board. It hopes to have a new model for Pete to try out soon.

This time the team is designing a boot for Pete to rest his amputated leg. Team members are also crafting a prosthetic that will secure itself to Pete’s stump. One option is a “flight vest” that would go under and around his wings. Another idea is a boot with a socklike rim that would compress around the parrot’s leg to keep it in place.