ALLENTOWN, Pa. — It was Pete’s screams that first alerted Benjamin Spalding to a crisis in the 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, wasted no time getting Pete to Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital, where Dr. La’Toya Latney, of the Exotic Companion Animal Medicine, and the emergency team were waiting.
Latney and the team tended to Pete’s wounds. His left leg was severed below the knee, and he had a small wound on his chest.
The next morning, Pete had a computerized scan to check for 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 addressed a long-term problem common with birds of Pete’s size who lose a leg. They can have pain and develop arthritis in their remaining leg.
Latney asked Dr. Jonathan Wood, staff veterinarian in neurology and neurosurgery to design 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 first legs had a realistic look but were unable to support Pete’s weight. The next set of prosthetics, which looked like walking boots, 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 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.
