Immigration Journal

The story of two people who emigrated from the UK to Ontario, Canada July 2006.

Suddenly it is all too real!

We are only a month away from landing now and we have to get everything in order. This unfortunately has included re-homing our pet parrot.

We have owned our African Grey for eleven years and originally thought of taking him with us, but he has a huge phobia of boxes. Despite us trying to get him used to boxes, he totally freaks at them and we felt it would be too cruel to put him in a box and expect him to travel to Canada for god knows how many hours. It would have been completely selfish of us to put him through this ordeal, so we decided the best thing for him would be to find him a good home here in the UK.

Over the last few weeks I have been contacting many different forums and re-homing companies to see what our options are. Yesterday we visited a couple who already have an African Grey and wanted another to keep it company. We basically went to their home to make sure it and they were up to our standards. They were a really nice couple who had lots of experience with parrots, having worked with them as well as owning them. We felt very comfortable with them and decided that our parrot should go and live with them.

Tonight they came over to collect him and much to our relief he seemed to accept them quite well, even letting them stroke him, which he doesn’t often do with strangers. As they packed him into the back of their van, my husband and I were left to mourn our loss. It is like packing off one of your kids, knowing you will never see them again, we are devastated. However, we know we have done the right thing for him, if not us.

They promise to keep in touch and let us know how he settles and keep us posted about his ongoing acclimatisation etc.

This has definitely been the day we have both been dreading, and already our house seems so quiet. I am sure that we will not shed as many tears over anything else related to our move!

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