When we started this series in 2015, I never imagined we’d be up to the third installment a bare two years later.
Our first featured craftsman was a one-man knitting dynamo, Mr. Alfie Date from Australia, who couldn’t bear to see the miniature penguins of Phillip Island freezing to death. Sadly, Mr. Date, who was 109 at the time, passed away in 2016, at the age of 110.
Later in 2015, we caught up with Ann and Nicola Congdon of the UK, who knitted sweaters for bedraggled “battery chickens,” retired from previous lives of hard service in industrial egg-laying. We’re happy to report that the Congdon ladies are still going strong, now offering a line of knitted bird sweaters for purchase by other thoughtful husbandmen and women of our feathered friends.
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In this third installment, we come to the melancholy case of Rhea, a lovebird whose sartorial emergency is that she has no feathers. She’s supposed to, of course. But she suffers from Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD), which has caused all her feathers to fall off in the last year.
Reportedly, this has caused certain inconveniences for Rhea and her owner, Isabella Eisenmann:
Due to the disease, Rhea is vulnerable for secondary infections and gets cold easily. …
Eisenmann keeps the heater on at home around the clock, as well as four heaters inside Rhea’s cage.
Sympathetic knitters from around the world have been sending tiny sweaters to help keep Rhea warm and toasty. Some of the sweaters, as in the feature image above, tend to the sensible and utilitarian. Others are girlier.
Others, we are sorry to say, are in questionable taste.
We will continue to keep you abreast of new developments in the always-unexpected world of bird-sweater knitting.
