BOB HOWARD with Rocky, the first of two scarlet macaws he lost to proventricular dilatation disease.

ROCKY, A SCARLET macaw, and Bob Howard, a professional photographer, were buddies. Most days found the two of them hanging out together at Howard's Lebanon, Pa., photography studio, where Rocky rode around on Howard's shoulder and welcomed customers with an exuberant "Hello!"

Smart as well as outgoing, Rocky knew lots of tricks. He could roll a ball and lie on his back on command. He "waved" by raising his foot, then opening and closing his toes. He had a vocabulary of over 200 words and enjoyed greeting himself in the mirror with, "Hi, bird."

But more than anything, Rocky and Howard were tight, as close as a bird and a human can be.

"He was my companion," says Howard, who purchased Rocky from a local pet store 10 years ago.

One morning in February, Howard's wife, Cindy, came downstairs to find regurgitated food on the perch in Rocky's cage. The couple quickly made an appointment with Rocky's veterinarian, who could find nothing wrong aside from a slight loss in weight. But Rocky soon took a terrible turn for the worse. Within two weeks the bird that had always been so vocal and affectionate with Howard had fallen silent and was having trouble walking.

This time, the veterinarian performed a barium series, wherein x-rays are used to monitor a white liquid as it makes its way through the digestive tract. And this time there was something clearly wrong: Rocky's proventriculus, the digestive chamber located in front of a bird's gizzard, was substantially enlarged. The probable diagnosis: PDD, a deadly avian disease.

The veterinarian informed the Howards that night. Then he dropped the bombshell. "They wanted to put him down immediately. I said 'no way,'" remembers Howard.

The veterinarian did not want to release Rocky because he might infect the rest of the Howards' pet birds, so the Howards left him in the clinic's ICU while they frantically did research. "I was not familiar with PDD at all," said Howard.

After three days, a time during which Howard discovered the nonprofit group www.stopPDD.org and spoke by phone with leading PDD researcher Dr. Branson Ritchie, he went back to the clinic to see Rocky and make a decision. "They showed me to a private room. Knowing what Rocky was like when he was healthy, it was hard to believe his condition. He was so glad to see me, he tried to run up to me. He wanted to be comforted."

That evening Howard allowed Rocky to be euthanized, weeping as he held him. "It was the worst four days of my life."

THE PDD QUILT features print and hand-appliqued parrots, like this blue-throat macaw in flight.

The avian AIDS
Sometimes called the avian AIDS, PDD - short for proventricular dilatation disease - has no cure and no vaccination. Scientists do not know exactly how it's transmitted, but it seems to be spreading. Since the first cases appeared in macaws 30 years ago, PDD has been reported around the globe in 50 other species of parrots. It causes a variety of symptoms ranging from regurgitation to neural problems, but the end result is almost always the same: an inability to digest food, resulting in starvation.

Bird lovers are fighting back. In recent years they have stepped up raffles and other events to raise money for PDD research. Last year, the Avian Health Network, the Reston, Va.-based group behind www.StopPDD.org, raised $20,000 for Ritchie's research effort, which is carried out by the Emerging Diseases Research Group in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia.

But Ritchie needs a minimum of $5,000 a month to conduct PDD research full-time. So this year fundraisers are taking a page from the AIDS playbook - they are creating a PDD quilt.

"The Birds of a Feather Quilt Project is a cooperative effort of bird owners and other volunteers to raise awareness of PDD," said Valerie Schuster, president of the Avian Health Network. "With PDD continuing to take so many birds, there is a sense of urgency to determine its cause and means of transmission."

The first of its kind, the cotton quilt will be a montage of birds depicted in 36 colorful panels, each measuring 10 inches by 10 inches. The finished quilt will measure 70 by 86 inches, said Ardith Raine of Reno, Nev., who is piecing it. Fabric.com is donating free shipping for the fabric. "It's not a huge quilt. I would call it a topper, one that will fit any size of bed," said Raine. "They're quite popular these days."

The PDD quilt will feature appliques and prints of birds, many decorative only, but others in memory of a particular victim. "I had a friend do my pieces for me in memory of my umbrella cockatoo, Dibbie, who was lost to PDD last year," said one owner, Andrea Rosner. Other quilt blocks include a Cubist toucan portrait and a realistic portrayal of a blue-throat macaw in flight. The blocks can be seen at http://www.stoppdd.org/clubs/birdfeathers.htm.

Unlike the AIDS quilt, the PDD quilt will not sit on display. The AHN will raise money for research by selling tickets to a drawing for the quilt next spring. While there's no set value placed on the quilt, "sentimentally, it's priceless," said Raine, who has worked on other animal charity quilts, including one for a mustang rescue group. "These quilts have a high emotional value; something like this is very, very dear to the people who have put the work into them."

Drawing tickets will go on sale at www.StopPDD.org in mid-October at $10 apiece, three for $25, seven for $50 and 15 for $100. Proceeds from the tickets will go to Ritchie's research team.

Fanciful parrots in jungle settings grace the PDD quilt. (Panels courtesy of www.StopPDD.org.)

The quilt will be both a beautiful addition to someone's decor and an important symbol, noted Schuster. "This quilt is not only a remembrance of all the birds that have been lost to PDD, it is a symbol of hope for avian health in the future. Each bird lost is one bird too many, and this quilt represents what is needed to fight this awful disease: people joining together to ensure the well-being of all our birds."

The PDD mystery
Despite years of scientific research, PDD largely remains a mystery. However, this much is known. It is thought to be a virus that inflames and permanently destroys the nerve supply to the proventriculus. Symptoms include depression, regurgitation, passing undigested seed and weight loss. PDD also can cause brain damage, reflected in abnormal head movements, seizures and other motor control problems.

PDD often is diagnosed with the help of a barium test; healthy birds need only two to three hours to pass the solution, while sick birds with PDD-weakened digestive tracts may need up to 19 hours. Crop biopsies are another diagnostic tool but result in false negatives about a quarter of the time because tissue samples can miss PDD lesions. The most accurate way to diagnose PDD is post mortem, when more tissue from multiple locations can be taken.

PDD seems to spread the most readily among birds that share the same cage, food or toys, suggesting direct contact or contact with a contaminated object is required for transmission. However, the scientific community has not ruled out the possibility that PDD is an airborne disease. Once infected, most birds develop symptoms within a year at the outside.

It is not known how many pet birds have been lost to PDD. However, in the late 1990s PDD was thought to be a close second behind the polyoma virus as the leading cause of death by disease, said Ritchie. "Now that we have a vaccine for polyoma, PDD has probably taken its place," he said.

Cockatiels could hold the key
Ritchie conducts experiments using an on-site flock of 50 parrots, most of whom arrived in the last stages of the disease from pet owners and breeders who were planning to euthanize. The birds include macaws, Amazons, African greys and cockatoos, the breeds that seem to be the most affected by PDD. However, the next research phase probably hinges on a flock of 20 cockatiels, said Ritchie.

The flock started with two pairs of birds and now encompasses several generations. That gives the EDRG a group of birds that can be studied for natural, as well as induced, signs of transmission, an important research tool.

Already the cockatiels have taught the EDRG one important new fact about PDD: the disease does not not always attack the proventriculus, at least not right away. A young cockatiel that tested positive for PDD based on a crop biopsy enjoys normal digestion. "That means we can't always rely on radiograph diagnostics," noted Ritchie.

Ritchie also has seen possible evidence that some birds develop an immunity. After years of exposure, a macaw hen paired with a PDD male has not become ill.

If you suspect your bird has been exposed to PDD, Ritchie suggests the following:

Fresh air and sunshine may improve overall health.

The anti-flammatory drug Celebrex, an increasingly popular PDD treatment, seems to make some birds feel better. However, it does not stop the disease from progressing.

Taking longer than expected
As to when the pet-bird community can expect some type of PDD medical breakthrough, Ritchie cannot say.

"We expected to have it done a long time ago," he admitted. "Our theories have been beaten so many times we don't know how the next tests will go. But we learn something from each one. You get another piece of the puzzle and eventually we'll have all the pieces we need to control the disease."

The stakes for a vaccine are high. PDD has been found in free-ranging geese, the rare roseate spoonbill and toucans, said Ritchie. Since toucans could conceivably pass it to their related cousins the woodpeckers, which share the same territories as songbirds, it's fairly easy to envision the decimation the bird population could suffer if the disease keeps spreading. "That really scares us," said Ritchie.

For bird owners like Bob Howard, help can't come too soon. "Losing Rocky the way I lost him, it was just ridiculous, it was so unnecessary," he said. "It was horrible, because there's really nothing you can do."

A virtual quilt panel at the StopPDD Web site is dedicated to Rocky the scarlet macaw. The online quilt honors 42 other pets lost to the disease.

After Rocky died, Howard and his wife decided to take in another scarlet macaw, which they kept quarantined at Howard's photography studio for the first two months.

Three months after transferring "Chico" to their home, he, too, died of PDD. The Howards now suspect that their seemingly robust blue-and-gold macaw, Ace, a cagemate of both Rocky and Chico, is an asymptomatic carrier. Ace joined the Howard household one year after Rocky did.

As the result of his experiences, Howard has decided not to acquire any more pet birds, a decision that pains him. To make matters worse, the Howards are now shunned by most of their bird-owning friends. "It's as if we have AIDS," he says. "We had to go outside the community we live in to get support."

Somewhere over the rainbow
If he has the time, Howard might contribute a square to the PDD quilt in memory of Rocky. The quilt is scheduled to be completed by the end of September.

In the meantime, Rocky is one of 43 pets memorialized in a virtual quilt the AHN maintains online. In a sentimental nod to the popular "rainbow bridge" fable of pets reunited with their owners in the afterlife, a soaring rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow plays in the background.

"I will never forget Rocky, my companion and my best friend," Howard writes at the site. "Those of us who share our lives with these precious creatures must commit whatever expense is necessary to isolate and find a treatment or cure for this dreaded disease. We must do it now."

ParrotChronicles.com

-------

Comments about this story? Send a letter to Mailbag.

ParrotChronicles.com.  September-October 2004. Copyright 2001-2004© All rights reserved