Ok so 30 min ago my mom in law called me and said her grandfather is dying. He's 6 hours north of us. We're trying to see what we can do with Skye. He likes our neighbors, but I don't want him staying there because they have a dog. We'll be leaving in a few minutes and coming back late this Saturday. I left plenty of food and water in Skye's cage.. but what if he flips his water dish over? I haven't gotten over to petco to pick up another one of those awesome coop cups. When I bought that one, that was the last one they had that size. It was either huge or tiny. His water dish is just one of those half circle shaped dishes that has the wires bent so it rests on one of the horizontal bars of the cage. He always flips over the other dishes i have like that when they have food in them, but never the water one. He went a bit nuts last time I left him alone this long. Looks like we'll have to again.. My husband refuses to let me take him with us. Pray that nothing goes wrong.. i'm so freakin worried.

Could you get a friend to house/bird sit?

So sorry to hear about this. Good that you all are going though. Maybe you could bend those wires around so he couldn't turn them over. Probably ruin them but at least you would know that he would have water. Maybe your neighbor could come check on him some.

Well, it's too late now for anything but, in the future, please have some phone numbers of pet sitters at hand. One needs to be prepared for this kind of thing because leaving animals by themselves for an entire day should never be even considered unless we are talking about cats or ferrets or canaries or any other animal that doesn't really need company, supervision, fresh food or going out.

I'm back. Skye seemed pretty normal when i came in. Now he's just happily playing with one of his balls on his play gym after an hour of cuddling with me. He didn't knock over his water dish. I know like no one in town. I'm still pretty new to the area and haven't really had a chance to make friends yet. My downstairs neighbors are people I trust, but I couldn't leave Skye with them because they have cats and dogs. Skye seems to like traveling, so next time, i'm gonna bring him with me. I didn't this time for the simple reason that my husband was freaking out and wouldn't let me grab Skye because he was afraid that Skye was gonna slow us down even more. Great-grandpa was ok. He was pretty bad when we came, but he's doing a bit better now.

Long weekend.. i was so worried about him! I still haven't really made friends with any bird people in town yet. I don't really even know of any.

Skye really does seem none the less for wear. He was pretty happy to come out and cuddle and play.

I wanted to give a key to my downstairs neighbor, but my husband flipped out about that. I know them better than he does, so that's understandable.

Things are pretty well here then and I'm so relieved. Next time there's another family emergency, i'm taking Skye wherever we go and everyone's gonna have to deal with it. I wont leave him alone anymore. I never have. He always comes to my folk's house with us over the weekend and likes all of them. The 2 hour trip doesn't phase him at all. The drive where we went ended up being 8 hours or so. I think, with frequent stops to stretch his wings and walk around with his harness on, that he'd be fine with an 8 hour drive, too. Does anyone know of any good trustworthy motels that allow birds? Preferrably one of the popular chains, if any of those are any good.

Glad to hear you are back safe and sound and Skye is fine.

Thanks everyone!!

Jess: Give Ruby hugs and scritchies from me k!

I'm glad everything went well.

I think however you should figure out an alternative bird sit - just in case. Jessalyn & others have a good relationship with a boarding facility. It would aid you a lot if you had to go quickly & couldn't take Sky - which could easily happen again; life is like that.

Very true. There is a parrot store in the next city over, 45 minutes from here. That's nearest bird boarding place. I need to make more friends.