Abstract
One does not expect catastrophes to occur and certainly one is not truly prepared when it actually becomes a reality. This story is, on one hand, about pet birds which are handled every day belonging to Yvonne and second, a large group of breeding birds belonging to Dale. The combined collection includes over 30 species of parrots, seven species of softbills, and one non-native bird of prey. The following shows the reaction and recovery during and since the January 17th Northridge earthquake. Neither of us ever considered such a cataclysmic disaster would occur in our lives.At 4:31 a.m., we were rudely awakened by the bed violently rocking back and forth, all four posts blasted simultaneously off the floor. There was no warning - when the quake started up it was already shifting the earth so much we couldn't have walked outside. The only way was to crawl, which was what survivors of the Northridge Apartments did, where just under 20 persons were killed or suffocated when the three stories collapsed.
The earth was shaking at such a force it created a monstrous vehement roar outside, analogous to a lion's roar over a microphone, inciting ruination along with an extremely high velocity of wind. To this day, we believe what we heard was the earth's labored protest to that horribly rude interruption, The second I woke up to this noise and unnerving rocking bed, it reminded me of the awfully scary and realistic movie, "The Exorcist." The next second, Dale advised it was an earthquake, which seemed to lessen the severity of it all. We just hung on as if we were riding a bucking bronco.
Dale's home is within 13 miles of the epicenter. Seismologists think the new fault line quake was, in reality, two earthquakes which occurred at the same time, one being the normal horizontal motion, the other a vertical thrust, thus the reason for the bed being airborne.
Searching our way through the dark for a light source, our legs collided with open drawers, our feet shuffled through broken glass. Books and other objects from shelves cluttered the floor. Dressers in bedrooms sailed across the floor; floor lamps zipped to the opposite end of the rooms and exploded when they hit the wall. We'd recently purchased some opal jewelry in Australia. One of the stones in a necklace shattered from the thrust of being thrown upward during the quake. It was lying in a drawer with plastic combs and curlers.
That day, long lines formed outside supermarkets, trying to force merchants to let them inside to purchase some food and bottled water. Many storefronts and their merchandise had collapsed and immediate warnings that looting would not be tolerated were put over the air waves. Several stores did allow "chaperoned" shopping excursions by flashlights later that day. Some stores were price gouging. They were selling a gallon of water for over $6 and baby formula for $8. The radio stations, which were our only contact with the outside world (if you were lucky enough to have batteries), quickly put an end to the gouging by chastising them on the air and requesting people boycott them - at the time and after other stores opened.
The day after the Northridge earthquake, aftershocks numbered over 100 within a 25-hour period. Surprisingly, the pet birds, which are on the back porch, were stone silent during the earth's ghastly shifting. Of course, there was no way we could distin- guish or have heard any bird noises because of the loud noise created by the earthquake. After the 30 some seconds of the quake, there was a second or two of silence, then the screaming began to be heard from the birds. To them, it must have seemed like a violent entity shook their cages in the dark. The macaws were flying into the sides of their cages, cockatoos screeching with unknown fear, toucans hitting the floor of their cage and bouncing back up to the sides. Obviously, all electricity and other utilities were down. The moment we located a flashlight and went in to check on the birds, we were greeted by blood everywhere. A Crimson Rosella was on her back, in too much shock to upright herself at the moment. Some cockatiels were brought into the bird nursery to keep as warm as possible - they wouldn't quit thrashing. Even the careful movement of their cages freaked them out.
Knowing that aftershocks were on the way, we considered letting the thrashing birds out of their cages. But we didn't because it would have been worse to have a light fixture or a large cage fall on them. They were all in a frenzied state and we could not calm them.
All of the birds had terror in their eyes. It's pathetic when you can't tell your beloved pets they'll be all right and that other temblors would soon come that hopefully wouldn't be as bad. Many birds had hit their heads on the inside of their cages, bloodying them up. Most blood came from wing feathers crashing into the cage as the birds' natural instinct told them to fly away from the danger. Many blood feathers were found on the ground that morning. Thank God nobody bled to death.
Because these birds appeared to be okay (with the exception of being scared out of their minds), we left them with a candle in their room. We immediately went down the hillside to check on Dale's breeder birds. Several pairs were sitting on eggs and would not go near their nestbox for several subsequent days. Many of the eggs...