Our Cockatoo Died Flying Cargo. Don’t Let This Happen Again.

He was supposed to live 70 years. Instead, as he traveled to his forever home in paradise, a series of mistakes and, ultimately, negligence killed him.

When I was about 11 years old, my family adopted an umbrella cockatoo. Instead of resembling the mighty white birds with towering head crests soaring through the forests of Indonesia, though, he was skinny, trembling, and rather naked when I first laid eyes on him.

His pale grey torso reminded me of a turkey corpse, plucked bare before Thanksgiving dinner. But he had inflicted this damage all on his own. Before my family took him in, his first guardian, who’d had him since he first hatched, gave birth to a human child, who soon consumed all her attention. The bird was often relegated to his cage, and there, languishing in boredom and isolation, he grew neurotic and angry, quite possibly jealous of the newborn stealing away all his mom’s affection.

So this bird turned on his own flesh, plucking feathers from his chest and dancing anxiously to and fro just to release some energy.

Such behavior is all too common in the captive population of parrots worldwide. Because of captive breeding and the illegal wildlife trade, tens of millions of parrots now occupy US homes and facilities–and thousands of them end up homeless every year as they become too rambunctious and under-stimulated in a caged environment or they outlive their human caretakers.

This particular cockatoo was one such bird–but, fortunately, my mom was ready and willing to jump to his rescue.

He came into our home with the name Lilah. But at the first vet visit, we learned that Lilah was indeed a he, not a she. Yet the name remained, as it was the primary tool from the English language he’d clung to for communication with our species. We couldn’t take that from him.

“Lilah?” he’d often ask in a quivering voice, as though pleading for food, affection, anything at all.

And those things, he soon learned, he would receive in abundance. At the offset, he became my cuddlebug. We were, more or less, around the same age. As an only child, I began to see him as a bit of a younger, talkative brother–like a toddler, first learning about the world and expressing his thoughts via a series of babbles and chuckles.

One evening, I approached his cage wearing a bright red tank top and reached in for some snuggle time, as I had done dozens of times before. But this time was different. This time, he rewarded me with a sharp, deep bite to my finger. Blood immediately pooled, and I wailed in response and ran away.

At that time, I was a loud, boisterous preteen with an opinion about everything. And the vivid red hue of my shirt was like a blaring “danger” sign. I’d scared him, and he reacted the only way he knew how.

But the incident scarred me enough to keep a healthy distance from him from then forward. And in my sulky teenage years, I found myself increasingly annoyed by his calls and shrieks, natural vocalizations that are used freely by flocks of wild parrots inhabiting the jungle, but are often found to be a nuisance by those attempting to confine these exuberant birds indoors.

I’ve always loved animals, but with Lilah, I could only love him from afar.

My mom, though, never wavered in her bond with him. Despite the handful of times he’d hauled off and pierced her nose with his beak upon being frightened by a man in a baseball cap or the vacuum cleaner, she adored him.

So, naturally, as my parents planned their big move to the Big Island of Hawaii in 2014, Lilah was coming with them. My mom plotted out the magnificent habitat she’d build for him in paradise, where he could soak in the sunlight, watch the flittering yellow finches, and eat exotic tropical fruits for decades to come.

But Lilah never made it there.

Hawaii has a host of complex requirements for importing animals, and birds specifically, to prevent the spread of disease–and my mom mastered them backwards and forwards.

A quarantine for 7 days at our local vet and a mountain of paperwork: check.

As my parents prepared to depart, leaving their two dogs and Lilah at the animal intake area of the airport, I bid farewell to the bird who’d once felt a little like my nemesis during my darkest periods of teenage angst, but now, cowering in his carrier, was like a fearful little child once again.

I didn’t know then that it would be our final goodbye, but it felt peaceful, like a long-awaited truce.

“I love you,” I said.

“Lilah?” he replied.

Later that night, my mom called me from California. Unfortunately, the vet had incorrectly completed the quarantine paperwork necessary for Lilah to enter Hawaii, so he had to redo his 7-day quarantine at a vet there. My parents opted to continue on to the islands with their two dogs and pay an animal transport company a hefty sum of money to handle Lilah’s trip a week later.

He would be in good hands, they were promised. He’d be given the utmost care.

A week later, I received another call.

“Laura, Lilah’s dying. He’s dying!” My mom’s blubbering voice could hardly make out the words.

He was in her lap, having just been picked up from the airport, and was listless, lethargic, barely hanging on.

“Can’t you find an emergency vet?” I begged over the phone.

But they were in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from anyone who could help. He died there, in her lap, moments later, after suffering a seizure.

To this day, my mom has trouble speaking about this tragedy. The sadness, the overwhelming guilt of putting her beloved companion in the hands of someone who was supposed to provide for his safety. I know it so well–I’ve been there myself.

But what happened was a string of errors my mom never could have anticipated or prevented, starting with the vet’s quarantine paperwork, which led to another crucial error: the animal transporter, who was paid to see Lilah directly onto his inter-island flight between Honolulu (the only port of entry for animals) and Kona on the Big Island.

Instead, to save money, she’d checked him into a cargo flight and left him there, where he sat for hours without water or food before being boarded up. Then, the transporter went dark, failing to answer my mom’s texts or calls. My parents didn’t even know his flight number. They had nothing.

Thus, when Lilah arrived in the cargo hold of the Kona airport, my parents had no idea of his whereabouts and couldn’t reach anyone who knew anything at all.

By the time my mom was finally contacted to pick him up, he’d gone over 24 hours without water–and likely without being checked on at all. That neglect, compounded by the stress of flying cargo, ultimately killed him.

And so my family was left to grieve in their paradise, Lilah’s empty cage on their front porch a forever reminder of what could have been.

Flying animals in cargo is always risky. Every year, animal companions die. In 2018, a report revealed that there had been 85 animal deaths in the last 3 years on flights in the US, with nearly half occurring on United Airlines. And just a few weeks ago, in the wake of two cats’ deaths on a Russian airline, guardians took to social media with photos of their dogs and cats to tell the airline that animals aren’t cargo–they’re passengers–in hopes of changing in-flight policy.

As for Hawaii, the state requires that all animals coming into the islands be taken immediately to the quarantine holding facility in Honolulu for inspection–but it doesn’t prescribe how these animals must enter, which is up to the individual airlines. While many of them will allow companions to fly in-cabin between islands, only a couple allow this for flights from the mainland to the state, leaving thousands of cherished companions relegated to the cargo hold. Or, even worse, they’re put onto a cargo-only airline that deals mostly with inanimate shipments, leaving actual live animals with very little to no care or oversight.

Why? Because the logistics of ensuring that animals flying in-cabin make it over to the quarantine hold facility for inspection would take time. And time is money.

It’s been over five years, but it’s time for Lilah’s story to become more than a black cloud over my family. It’s time for me to share it with the world and help other dogs, cats, and birds from suffering the same fate.

It’s time for the major airlines from the mainland U.S. to the Hawaiian Islands to apply, at a bare minimum, the same rules they use for flights within the lower 48 states–which allow small animals in carriers to stay in the cabin with their families.

And for animals who are only given the option to travel in cargo either into or between the islands, these carriers must implement rigid standards for animal companions, including constant tracking of animals’ whereabouts, hourly monitoring in holding facilities, and provision of water at regular intervals.

Please join me in calling on these airlines to protect our beloved animals who are entrusted into their care by signing my petition below.

Petition to be delivered to: Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and Aloha Air Cargo.

Petition count: 1,439 signatures

When the Wedding Favors Have Fins

White linens lined the tables, and Barbra Streisand’s voice filled the air. The banquet hall oozed with love. We paid our respects to the bright-eyed newlyweds and took our seats. And that’s when I first saw him.

The glass vase, the centerpiece of it all, confined not flowers, but fins. There he swam, in endless circles, bordered by a ring of porcelain plates and framed by shining silverware like armor.

He watched us exchange pleasantries with our tablemates, the angst-filled silence filling gaps in conversation, and the moment we awkwardly stood for the first dance. He, of course, said nothing.

As I took her hand in mind and swayed my hips to the melody, I saw them all–a dozen more like him–in their own glass jails.

Food was consumed in excess, laughs echoed from the walls, and a young child’s rendition of the Macarena was the talk of the night. Meanwhile, his eyes were opals, relics of an underwater world, captivating my own.

Guests filed out at midnight, clutching the glass vases to their chests. A dozen wedding favors, heading home. Home: a sphere of invisible walls atop a glass counter top, forever.

But he remained. His options quickly became clear: Live at the bar, a fly on the wall behind a parade of drunken sobs and sloppy kisses.

Or… Go home. With us.

The decision was made. He sloshed up and down in his bowl, gaping up at us, as we tiptoed into the night. The drive home was slow–after all, he was delicate cargo.

It wasn’t ideal, his captive life. We set him up in a respectable tank with colors, rocks, obstacles. A taste of a challenge beyond swimming the same curved path day in and day out.

He was mellow, mostly. Curious but not carefree. Bold but modest. And, as expected of a male Betta fish, he was not so fond of his own brilliant reflection.

Then, when fed, he’d get this streak, this fierceness, and he became a vibrant blue sea dragon, mightily conquering his freeze-dried food. He was braver than any human I’ve ever met.

I learned where he came from, probably: Imprisoned in a minuscule plastic bag or container with just enough water to survive. Blue-tinted water, captivating and surreal to a child’s wandering eyes–tranquilizing to him. An additive used to calm Bettas as they endure the trauma of transport over hundreds of miles to their destination: the store shelf.

Roux, as we called him, had some semblance of enrichment, our best attempt to disguise the artificiality of his habitat. But most don’t. They spend their days and months in small vases that limit their access to oxygen, which they breathe in at the water’s surface.

In stagnant water, often deprived of their natural diet of insects, they often perish.

Roux lived with us for more than a year before succumbing to illness. Burying him under our apple tree, we wiped away tears. We planted one of his neon plastic trees as a grave marker. We thought we’d done it right. He could’ve lived to be 5.

But a tank can never be a pond.

And that radiant blue hue–imprinted onto him through years of selective breeding–was never meant to be.

But on that one romantic night, at least he matched the bridesmaids’ dresses.

Poppyseed: The 'Teacup' Toddler

Poppyseed: The “Teacup” Toddler

It was 7 p.m. on a Thursday night in late winter. Instead of catching the tail end of happy hour with friends after a long day of editing scientific manuscripts, I was hunched over the kitchen floor with a soiled rag in one hand while the other groped around inside a tiny mouth seeking the remnants of a rubber band. My wife coaxed the captor of the elastic to no avail. Screams were escalating, and they were murderous. I surrendered, collapsing into a splatter of diarrhea camouflaged against the stone floor.

I began to weep on my wife’s shoulder. I didn’t sign up for parenthood, I sobbed. I still had tropical paradises and European backpacking adventures to experience, a novel to write, a career to etch out. I sighed, forfeiting the next 18 years of my life in one grand exhale. In that moment, I nearly forgot that the source of the vehement wailing, indiscriminate pooping, and unrestrained mischief was no human child.

Rather, our little toddler was a Vietnamese potbellied pig. Well, minus the infamous potbelly. The bones of his 30-pound frame jutted out at odd angles, and his rear legs curled underneath his torso when he stood. His head drooped low, and he stumbled when he walked.

Poppyseed didn’t have a name when we first encountered him swaddled in a blanket in the passenger seat of a pickup truck. His eyes were barely open; his legs were useless. We transferred him to our backseat, and that’s when the uncontrollable defecating began.

The kind woman who had removed him from his frosty hell gave us the scoop. The eight-month-old had once been loved, living in a lush condo as a wee piglet, until he was exiled by the homeowner’s association. His next stop in life wasn’t quite so furnished. For three weeks, he resided in an empty hunting dog run through frigid February nights and two snowstorms. His hooves slid across the icy ground when he attempted to reach food or water. Almost a third of his body weight was shed.

We sought emergency veterinary treatment. Poppyseed’s body was covered in sores. Along with malnourishment, an infection was brewing. The numbers on the bloodwork were haywire. Worms ravaged his intestinal tract.

After a few days of treatment, we managed to stifle the bacteria. Days turned to weeks, and Poppy’s ears began to perk up; his eyes became brighter. Slowly, Poppyseed became part of our pack, our family. I began to hear imaginary snorts and grunts in public places, and the endearing pitter-patter of hooves echoed through my dreams. I watched him sleep, softly snoring, cocooned in a pile of blankets. The first time I saw Poppyseed race across our backyard with reckless abandon, I nearly burst into tears.

Poppyseed - The Every Animal Project

But the breakthrough wasn’t big enough. The pounds crept back into his belly at an agonizingly sluggish pace, and angry bouts of diarrhea arrived at random, converting our house into a temporary warzone. Lab results showed elevated liver enzymes. Medications were prescribed; supplements were administered. Some led to an onslaught of diarrhea, while others were spit up immediately, regardless of whether they were tucked into peanut butter or vanilla icing.

Eventually, we took the plunge and traveled three hours to a vet specializing in porcine acupuncture. As soon as his hooves hit the ground of the pen adjacent to the vet’s three enormous resident pigs, the fog lifted. Poppyseed raced the perimeter, hair standing on end, jaw chomping. Through his excitement, he didn’t even notice when the acupuncture needles went in. But as the electric current began to emit a low hum, Poppy sank to the ground, suddenly mellowed. If pigs could smile, there would have been a grin the size of Texas on his face.

Finally, the bloodwork began to level out, and Poppy’s spirits soared. One day, he met his new best friend: a vibrant yellow ball that always seemed to outpace his wriggling nose. He loved the chase. Soon, a romance developed. It was unstoppable. Poppy mounted that yellow ball with all his might until we were forced to pry it from his grasp. Then, he mounted us. It was time for him to get neutered.

The surgery went fine, but within two days, something was clearly wrong. Poppy was still in a daze, but the anesthetics should have been long gone from his system. He wasn’t eating, and his diarrhea returned with a vengeance. At 2 a.m., I called every vet I could find but turned up with no leads. My wife and I suffered through the night alongside our piglet, waking every half hour to the sound of urine splattering on the floor and Poppy tumbling over furniture in bouts of complete confusion.

In the morning, I rushed Poppy into our regular vet, who whisked him off for emergency treatment involving cold baths to get his fever down, antibiotics, and fluids. I sobbed watching Poppy screaming in terror as he was carried away from me. The vet collected information from the neutering surgeon on the anesthetics that had been used, frowning as he scribbled in a notepad. The cocktail of drugs had overwhelmed Poppy’s weak system. He’d have done it differently, he said, shaking his head. I wept and wiped my weary eyes. We’ll take care of your pig, the veterinary technician told me. Go get some rest. I obeyed.

Mid-afternoon, an optimistic call came through. Poppy was doing better, engaging in hide-and-seek with the staff. We could pick him up later. At 6 p.m., I arrived in high spirits. I paid the bill as the receptionist went to fetch our pig. She carried him out and placed him on the floor next to me. Immediately, Poppy toppled over. I dropped to my knees, stroking him.

A vet emerged from the back and began asking questions, poking and prodding, making observations. Poppy only groaned faintly. Perhaps in denial, I began to ask about his medications—what time, how many pills, with or without food? There was no response. In a blur, Poppy was carried away to the back again.

A short time later, I was invited into one of the patient rooms. I’m so sorry, said the vet softly as she walked into the room. I began to tell her it was OK, that I didn’t mind the wait. He had a seizure before we could do the X-ray, she said. He passed away. I’m so sorry.

I remember the tears falling and never stopping. My vocal chords seized so that all that could come out was unintelligible bellowing. They brought him to me, and I draped myself over his body. Some time passed, but I couldn’t leave. I squeezed him so tightly that a puff of air forced its way from his lips. I convinced myself in that moment that he was still alive.

My wife and I cried in a darkened room that evening, surrounded by our dogs whose eyes and ears drooped alongside our own. I had not asked to be a parent, but in some ways, I had become one, nurturing a skeleton into a grunting, nudging, burrowing, cuddling piglet who had completely depended on me to survive. I had rolled up my sleeves and cleaned up feces, fixed chewed-up baseboard, and did more loads of laundry that I can count. And somewhere along the way, I began to love so deeply a being who felt pain and loneliness, oozed with curiosity, and, at the end of the day, simply wanted to disappear into a black hole of cushions, just like me.

After Poppy’s death, with a hole in my heart, I yearned for someone to blame. I thought about the vet who had overwhelmed Poppy’s body with anesthetics. I thought about how I’d forced my pig into a surgery he wasn’t strong enough to survive. And then I thought about the mystery man who left Poppy in the snow to perish, the man who truly sealed Poppy’s fate. But all I know of that man are his last words to my pig: “It’ll be a miracle if you survive.”

In grieving, I learned that Poppyseed’s story is mirrored by thousands of neglected and abandoned potbellied pigs around the country every year. Breeders churn out “micro” and “teacup” pigs, promising the equivalent of little oinking puppies. Instead of loyal, carefree canines, the 100-pound adult pigs become independent, stubborn, and too smart for their own good.

Poppyseed taught me that pigs are essentially toddlers—forever. Pigs enjoy nothing more than spending hours tilling their guardians’ backyard, uprooting manicured lawns and flowerbeds. But confined to a small space indoors, under-stimulated and dissatisfied, many become reckless.  The house becomes their personal sandbox, and flooring, closet doors, and trashcan lids are just temporary obstacles.

So when overgrown, rebellious pigs become too much for their families, they’re given the boot. Sites like Craigslist abound with unwanted former “teacup” pigs, and sanctuaries overflow. Yet breeders don’t stop, profiting off fantasies of piglets posed in Easter baskets with daisies and tulips. When I see those photos, I remember the thousands of pigs who never get their happy ending. I remember Poppyseed.

Laura Lee Cascada is a writer, editor, and advocate based out of Virginia.