This page is kept up in tribute to my teacher and best friend, Mer (he insisted on calling himself this). Mer passed due to liver problems 2 days before Thanksgiving 2009. He had just turned 15. I am thankful for the time that I had with him and for everything he taught me. He is missed more than I can say. His urn sits along with the rest of my passed tiels.
Mer can fly once again......

This is Mr. Merlin Bird. He was born in October of 1994, NCS band 23, and is a normal whiteface male. He has a vocabulary of over 30 words and phrases. Merlin has taught me a lot about the handling of tiels and how to work with each one as an individual. Although Merlin does not like to be touched, he never has and I don't push it ever.

Merlin is my little cancer survivor. He had a lump on his right wing that he kept on picking at back in the 90's. At first there was nothing there, just a bump, then it got bigger and he kept on picking it open and raw. The first vet I took him to that "did birds" looked and said it was a feather cyst. A few months passed and he still picked it more and more aggressively. It smelled funny, looked oozy and did not look like a normal feather cyst. His dropping were gross and smelly. I took him to a certified avian vet and she told me that it had to come off right away. She was angry that the other vet just passed it off as a cyst. The operation went well, but on recheck and return of the biopsy, it was shown that Merlin had a very aggressive form of melanoma. The doctor wanted to make sure it was all gone, so we decided to amputate the lower half of his wing. This would be the same as amputating you fingers from your hand if you compared bone structure to a humans. The doctor left the "thumb" bone and took out as much tissue around the cancer as she could to make sure it was all gone. Merlin was a super patient in recovery and never even picked his bandages.

Merlin continues to check clean for regrowth, but flies like a rock. He has his own cage, lower and smaller than the rest of the tiels and comes out sometimes. I have a double layer of towels under his papers and no grate on the bottom of his cage because he sometimes falls when he is excited and tries to fly. He is no longer talking as much from all of the trauma he has been through, but still insists on nite-nite when dusk comes on.

Merlin's father and brother both have lumps on the same wing, but neither ever progressed to a cancer. I am not sure what spurred Merlin's into such an agressive growth, but without proper treatment by my veterinarian, I would surely have lost him.