Story Bird: Moose   

We had a budgie named Baby who had a tumor and died (last summer).  His
companion, an English Budgie male named Moose, went into a depression.  He
had had fatty tumors probably all his life, was older, and didn't handle
stress very well.  One morning I noticed he seemed more lethargic, so I
called the vet.  The vet described a "steam treatment" that we knew of and
had used successfully before with no problem, to give a sick bird a little
heat and humidity, which is normally beneficial.  Some vets and bird owners
even give this to healthy birds, as it's supposed to be good for them.  I'm
not talking about extreme heat or steam, just warmth and humidity.  The
method is to set the bird's cage in the bathroom, (not in the shower!), then
turn on the shower and let it run and steam up the room.  I decided to give
them all a bit of humidity.  The bird's cages were sitting on the vanity.  I
adjusted the water temperature, closed the door to hold in the steam and was
out of the bathroom for about five minutes, then went back to see if the
room had steamed up yet.  Thank God I didn't just leave them for the
recommended 20 minutes without checking!  I walked in to all four of our
budgies and our cockatiel thrashing on their cage floors and screaming!
The water temperature had shot up to way higher than normal, and the
bathroom was incredibly hot and dripping with steam.  This happened very
fast. Apparently the hot water heater for our apartment building is set much
higher than normal.  Since it isn't something we control, we had no idea.
The birds were now laying on their sides, unable to perch.  I turned off the
shower, got the cages out of the bathroom and started running each bird
under cool water, especially the area under the wings where there are
sparser feathers so they'd cool off.  As I was doing this, and crying, and
trying not to panic so badly that I couldn't help the birds, someone had
heard me scream and called the police.  The police came in and thought I was
nuts for getting upset over a bird, which didn't help the situation one bit.
Our cockatiel was fine almost right away, and two of the budgies, even our
old hen, recovered pretty quickly but were very stressed out.  But poor
Moose, he just never regained his ability to perch.  He sat all fluffed out,
wings out to the side, screaming.  I rushed him to the vet, and the vet kept
him there, giving him fluid and other treatments.  But he died there that
night.  My warning is that if you don't have control over your hot water
temperature, or know what it is, don't use this treatment...or at the very
least stay in the room with them and remove them if it looks like you can't
control the temperature or if the birds start showing signs of over heating,
such as holding the wings out, distress, screaming, etc.  I couldn't even
hear my birds screaming until I opened the bathroom door because the noise of
the water drowned it out.  As I said in my first message, this was and still
is the most horrible day of my life.  The guilt is still with me, that I
should've stayed in the room, left the door open, known about the hot water
heater, etc.  I hope this prevents it happening to someone else.
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Thanks to Cindy Schnackel for this story