We live in the central valley not far from San Jose  so we are not troubled by snakes or wild animals. We do get the occasional scorpion (venomous but not life threatening), the occasional tarantula, but not much more. Killer bees live here, of course, and once in a while there are news reports about an attack… seldom fatal. The poison darts frogs of Costa Rica are quite famous and we can see them all the time near the river on my wife’s property in Limon Province, but they are not found in the central valley. Folks living near the beaches or in other truly tropical areas have told me of brushing against or handling certain varieties of caterpillars that can cause amazingly serious and painful injuries.

Here though, and right in our back yard, we get toads.  Big fat fellows that emit a serious poison through their skin when threatened. I must say I completely underestimated the danger of this reptile, and my lack of understanding almost cost the life of our dog, Piro. She would be dead if not for our parrot (lora). a yellow naped Amazon.

If this story interests you, read on!

The Bird (top left – whose real name is QuiQui) and the dog (bottom right) are fast friends. This was not always so as there was some dispute as to who was going to be alpha in the pet hierarchy. Those of you familiar with parrots know them as pretty fearless critters, and ours falls into that category quite nicely.  The Dog learned this the hard way having had her nose tweaked numerous times when she tried to assert herself. The Bird, who is quite capable of flight, prefers to walk. As walking places her nicely on the Dog’s terrain, turf wars were inevitable. It took the Dog and the Cats a very short while to learn who was alpha insofar as the floor was concerned.  The cats give her wide birth and the Dog is her sidekick covering her like a bodyguard.  This procession never fails to amuse me.

As mentioned, the Bird is quite fond of the Dog and it was this weird relationship that saved the Dog’s live a couple of weeks ago.

The Bird was in her outdoor cage and the Dog was roaming the back yard. We were all indoors doing whatever when QuiQui starts screaming. Those of you who know or have parrots know that when they let loose… they really let loose and can be heard for miles. As the bedroom is not miles from the back yard, we jumped out of our skins at the racket and ran outside to see what was the issue.

Piro had found and decided to chow down on one of the large toads I mentioned above.  The result was almost immediate and had not the Bird sent out the alert, it would have surely been fatal. Piro started running in circles, out of control as the poison entered her system via her gums. My wife and Carlos attempted to give her milk with lemon juice, later determined not to be a useful, and also used water to flush her mouth, later determined to be the correct thing, but still relatively useless.

We all piled into the car for the 1 KM trip to the vet hoping that she would be there. At this point, Piro was totally out of control, suffering spine bending contractions, similar to epileptic seizures of the grand mal variety.

We arrived minutes later, and thankfully, the vet was there. She grabbed Piro and placed her on the operating table. Piro’s heart rate was out of control and she bagan an IV, not a simple task on a dog suffering whole body contractions and whipping around like crazy. We  saw no improvement and the vet, without my wife seeing this, shook her head. No chance.

Still, she gave us small hope saying if she survived another 5-10 minutes….

She did, but the contractions were absolutely unchanged. There were no outward signs of improvement. It did not look good.

Carlos and I had to leave, but Maria Luisa decided to stay with Piro, promising to call when she either improved or…

Five hour later we got the call. Piro was alive and we went to pick her up. She was alive, but completely sedated from the drugs.

We made a bed for her indoors when we returned, but she did not move a muscle for 7-8 hours. When she did wake up, we discovered that she was completely deaf and blind. This was apparently normal because of the massive amount of drugs given her, but at the time, we did not know this.  It was heartbreaking.

Two days later, she regained her vision and hearing, but her coordination was gone.  She could not even negotiate a single six inch step. We had no idea what to expect and the vet, who I think was surprised she made it this far, could only suggest we wait to see how she progressed, but gave some hope that she might well recover completely.

She did!

It took two more weeks, but she made a 100% recovery.

Folks often ask about the vets here, and I have always said my experiences have been very good. Clearly, our vet did wonderful work, never leaving Piro’s side for almost 5 hours.

As we were leaving her office with Piro, I went to settle up the bill. I am not sure what I was expecting.  Veterinary care is less expensive her, but 5 hours? Drugs?

She told me the bill was 20,000 colones (about $40.00).  I said that was impossible, totally forgetting that my comment would be taken as trying to negotiate a better price. It was, and she looked embarrassed.  I looked more embarrassed as I explained it was far too little for the work, and not too much.  After “bargaining” she accepted 40,000 colones, and that was a battle.

Nice story huh?  Happy ending!

I told her last week that I planned to Blog this story.  She asked for confidentiality.  Please do not ask me for her name and office location.  She has a small practice and does not want/need new clients at this time.

I can now say that this law has been changed and the news is good and bad.

The good news is that you may now once again bring your birds to Costa Rica.

The odd part? You may NEVER export those birds to any other country after they are here! I guess this should be called the bird version of Hotel California… You can check in, but you can never leave…

Therefore, as I have written at least 1,000 times before, if you are not 100% SURE that you will want to live permanently in Costa Rica (currently about 50% leave before first year), I would urge you NOT to bring your pet birds until you have lived here at least 6-9 months and are sure this will be a lifelong move.

For further information, I would suggest contact ARCR . I am sure members can get the hot skinny on this topic.