ALLENTOWN, Pa. _ It was Pete's screams that first alerted Benjamin Spalding to a crisis in backyard. A fox had grabbed the 34-year-old Mealy Amazon parrot as he was climbing up the side of his aviary and tore off his left foot.
Spalding and his wife, Stacey Gehringer, of Allentown, Pa., wasted no time in getting Pete to Penn Vet's Ryan Hospital, where Dr. La'Toya Latney, Service Head and Attending Clinician of the Exotic Companion Animal Medicine, and the emergency team were waiting.
Latney and the team worked to stop the bleeding and provide fluid therapy for their patient. Then they sedated Pete to tend to his wounds. His left leg was severed midway below the knee and he had a small wound on his chest.
The next morning Pete had a computerized tomography (CT) scan to check for any further damage.
"With this imaging, we were able to see the full nature of Pete's injury, which really helped with surgical planning," said Latney. "We got Pete into surgery within 48 hours."
Surgeons cleaned out the damaged and infected tissue and closed the wound.
With the short term crisis under control, veterinarians looked to address to the long-term issue common with birds of Pete's size who often experience pain and develop arthritis in their remaining leg.
Latney tasked Dr. Jonathan Wood, Staff Veterinarian in Neurology and Neurosurgery, with designing a prosthetic leg for Pete.
"I wanted to see what we could do for Pete with 3-D printing," said Wood. "We think about animals that will rehab well and animals that will rehab poorly, similar to people. If there was a parrot that wanted to use what we made for him, Pete seemed to be a good candidate."
The group, which now included Stephen Smeltzer, Digital Fabrication Manager at PennDesign's Fabrication Lab and fourth-year student Gregory Kaiman, set out to create the leg. They also needed to figure out how to attach the prosthetic so the bird would be comfortable.
The initial prototypes had the look of an actual parrot foot but were unable to support Pete's weight. The next set of prosthetics, which resembled a walking boot, were more stable.
Pete "didn't bite at it, he didn't try to tear away at it," said Latney. "At points when he felt stable, he would actually bear weight on it."
But the leg slipped off when Pete lifted it up so the design team had to go back to the drawing board. They hope to have a new model for Pete to try out soon.
This time they are designing a boot for Pete to rest his amputated leg. They are also crafting a prosthetic that will secure itself to Pete's stump. One option is a "flight vest" that would go under and around his wings. Another idea is a boot with a sock-like rim that would compress around the parrot's leg to keep it in place.
For now, Pete is home with Spalding and Gehringer, who help him with physical therapy on his remaining limb.
"It was fantastic to see Pete using something that we had made," said Wood. "This experience changed our thinking about how to approach other amputees."
