DRUGGED-OUT PARROTS GO COLD TURKEY AT REFUGE

Polly want crack? Or maybe a beer or a cloud of cigarette smoke blown
in the beak?

All are familiar scenarios to Wendy Huntbatch, president of the World
Parrot Refuge in the Vancouver Island community of Coombs where,
among 800 rescued birds, there are parrots withdrawing from drugs,
recovering from exposure to smoke, or healing after mistreatment by
drug users and dealers.

"We have birds that were used as toys by drug addicts. Watching them
go through withdrawal is dreadful," Huntbatch said.

The backgrounds of many birds at the World Parrot Refuge are enough
to make their feathers fall out -- literally.

A derbyan parakeet came in with all colour sucked out of its
feathers, a broken tail and a bad case of the shakes.

"He would just vibrate," Huntbatch said. "It was horrible."

That parakeet is a success story. "We have given him vitamin shots
and he has done remarkably well. It took about three weeks before his
colour started coming back," Huntbatch said.

Others take much longer to recover or are beyond help.

An emaciated macaw had lost all its feathers by the time it arrived
in Coombs, about 30 kilometres northwest of Nanaimo.

"I worked with him here every day and we managed to put some weight
on him, but we never could get far. He was too damaged and he passed
on," Huntbatch said sadly.

However, the macaw's suffering wasn't entirely in vain. While he
lived, he served as a graphic lesson to warn kids away from drugs.

"We have school trips coming in and I would show the kids another
bird of the same species and then show them this bird and say, 'This
is what drugs do to you,'" Huntbatch said.

The World Parrot Refuge gives birds that arrive on its doorstep a
home for life and is unique in Canada.

But money is running out and Huntbatch wonders what the future holds.

Provincial gambling grants for the refuge were cut off two years ago
and the $400,000 annual budget has to be raised entirely from donations.