The silly season isn’t just for us humans, because it seems that our feathered friends love to absolutely send it with summer seshes, too. Specifically, red-winged parrots in Western Australia have been turning up to vet clinics fully blasted after scoffing down fermented, fallen fruit. Imagine a parrot getting ratshit drunk, nothing but respect to these birds who simply love to hoon.
Per ABC Kimberley, a veterinary hospital in Broome has seen a bunch of parrots come in over the last couple of weeks, completely trollied from chowing down on mangoes at the end of the fruiting season. As the fruit falls and begins to ferment, it produces enough ethanol to cause the parrot community to get drunk as skunks.
Apparently, a good half dozen boozed birds have been brought into the Broome vet hospital over the last week. They’ve been luckily picked up by concerned humans wondering why the fuck a bright red and green parrot is toddling around like someone’s uncle at 2pm on Christmas day.
“So far, we’ve seen about half a dozen in total, but there are a lot of them, unfortunately, that don’t make it to the clinic because they pass away before people find them,” veterinarian Paul Murphy told the ABC.
“Usually, they’ve been suffering for a couple of days. That’s generally when people are able to pick them up and catch them.”
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It’s not the first time we’ve heard about birds getting fully munted after gorging themselves on boozy gifts from the natural world. If you cast your minds back to 2017, lorikeets were found going absolutely boonta on a Weeping Boer-bean tree in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, which has fermenting nectar in its flowers.
These sesh gremlins might have it good while they’re hoofing down on rancid fruits and berries but — much like those of us who tend to tie it on a bit hard — they can wind up quite sick. Not only that but their drunken behaviour can make them even more vulnerable to predators (and their own dumbass decisions, like flying into stuff).
“We’re hearing a few reports of flying into windows and sitting on the floor, not being able to fly and being vulnerable to cats and other predators,” Paul the Vet told the ABC.
So if you clock some birdies getting blitzed on funky fruit over the summer months, keep an eye on them and safely take them to your nearest vet or wildlife rescue so they can sleep off the hangover in safety.
