SINGAPORE: A video of a parrot being mistreated by a woman, allegedly a domestic helper, made the rounds on social media over the weekend. In it, she can be seen flicking the colourful parrot on its beak, shaking it, and then feeding it with her own spit.
It was uploaded on r/singapore by woodmon122 on Sunday (Feb 19) with the caption “Domestic Helper Finds Parrot and Uploads Video of Animal Abuse on Social Media.” The caption also says “If you are the owner of the bird please be aware of this. Around Bartley area.”
Domestic Helper Finds Parrot and Uploads Video of Animal Abuse on Social Media
byu/woodmon122 insingapore
And while the video shows that it was taken from @thedrunkbirds TikTok account, a quick check on that page shows that it is no longer there.
“If anyone lost your bird at Changi, pls know that this helper fed it saliva (watch till the end),” is written across the video, however.
Commenters on Reddit were, understandably, outraged at the woman’s behaviour.
“Wah wtf, I wonder what’s going on in her brain when she did that. She’s forcing it into the parakeet’s mouth. Who in the right mind will do something like this…,” one wrote.
“Big red flag right there. Employer should consider changing their helper,” another chimed in.
And when one Reddit user wrote, “This is disgusting,” another quickly answered, “Someone’s getting deported.”
Another commenter noted, “I hope she doesn’t take care of the elderly or children because due to her disorder, she may not have empathy or even care for their feelings/wellbeing.”
“hope the owner will file case against her. its clearly animal abuse. if she doesnt get to face the consequences then she will still think that there was nothing wrong with what she did. she will do this kind of stuff to children as well for sure,” agreed a Reddit user.
Another noted that “human saliva harms birds” and asked what can be done.
Fortunately, the bird is now okay.
“The parrot has been rescued as of 10PM 19th February 2023
One of our members from the parrot group managed to track down her exact place of residence and paid her a visit to secure the bird in safe hands.”
Human saliva is indeed toxic to birds. “Our mouths are teeming with a variety of bacteria that birds do no commonly have. Exposure to our saliva will most commonly cause an e-coli infection,” one article says. /TISG
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