While she’s not a pudgy budgy, there’s one roly-poly little kookaburra in Australia that has suddenly gone from living the high life and chowing down on sausages to working out three times a day with a personal trainer, eating diet food, and living in a bird-style gymnasium. The bird was too fat to fly, thanks to people feeding her sausages and other people food at barbecues in a park in Sydney, Australia. She was a hefty 1.2 pounds, 40 percent heavier than a bird her size should have been.
“Out in the wild she’d eat a whole small animal such as a mouse or skink, but butcher’s sausages are just too much of a good thing,” said Gemma Watkinson, a wildlife hospital nurse at Taronga Zoo. “The kookaburra’s been down at the rehabilitation aviary for a couple of weeks on a special ‘lite n’easy’ diet designed by our bird keeper. We’ve fitted the temporary home out like a ‘bird gym’.”
She’s not going to be a permanent resident of the zoo. She’ll be returned to fitness, then returned to the wild once she’s able to fend for herself. Concerned Aussies turned the bird over to the zoo after noticing that she was being chased around by dogs, unable to escape. Now she’s doing “Extreme Makeover, Zoo Edition” and dropping those excess 6 ounces!
Tags: kookaburra, fat bird put on a diet, fat kookaburra put on diet, bird addicted to sausages, Sydney, Australia, Gemma Watkinson, Taronga Zoo, unusual animals, bird too fat to fly
