For the birds - Oakesdale couple uses home as shelter for injured birds

Cherie Zehm jokes with her rescued cockatoo, Tut. Zehm has worked to teach Tut to trust again, as he has had a rough past.

Fifteen birds are loose in Cherie Zehm’s living room and not a single one is quiet. Bird droppings streak the carpet, the chairs, and the windows. Feathers blow this way and that.

Two parakeets flirt on the curtain rod, bursting into the air to fight and then settling back on their perch again. A young cockatiel, one of four born this year, starts up a racket when she clamors for food from her father.

This is the house of Zehm’s Zoo, a non-profit bird rescue shelter in Oakesdale.

For more than 20 years, unwanted macaws, broken-winged cockatiels, abandoned Great Horned Owls, sick cockatoos and other birds in peril have made it to the doorstep of Cherie and her husband, Paul Zehm.

“I have a need to make them content and as close to heaven as they can get on this earth,” said Zehm.

During an interview with the Gazette on Jan. 29, one yellow cockatiel perched on her shoulder, intermittently running his beak over her lips and snuggling under her chin.

For free, Zehm will give a bird and a cage away to a good owner once she has ascertained they can properly care for a bird. People who hear of her service drop off birds too.

She estimates they have recieved more than 10 birds in the past 12 months, and given away just as many.

A large part of the work they do is rehabilitating birds who have been neglected or traumatized.

One cockatiel, Taz, has no right wing; it was broken after being twisted and smashed when a dog knocked her cage over. When someone finally brought the bird to Zehm, she took her to a vet, who removed the wing.

Taz’s story ends well. Yeti, another cockatiel, fell in love with Taz after she arrived.

“They’ve been practically inseparable ever since,” Zehm said. And they have now had four baby cockatiels together.

Zehm believes she can tell some parrots have been abused in the past through her psychic ability. She claims the first hug she gave their cockatoo, Tut, revealed his owner had been beating him with a stick while he couldn’t get away.

Part of rehabilitation is restoring birds emotionally, Zehm said. She claims she does this by keeping the lights low, playing soothing music and gently hugging and speaking to the animals.

“I get them under my hair and they snuggle because they are so sad. They get up under your neck because they are just scared of the world.”

It took a year for Tut to willingly leave his cage, she said.

They have two cats and two dogs in the house, but Zehm maintains they don’t go after the birds.

Zehm said her personal interest in caring for the birds started in her childhood. Several instances of abuse toward her left her hurting deeply.

“The way I handled it was instead of feeling sorry for myself, I felt sorry for birds,” she said.

Loving animals continued to play a big part in her life as she grew up, she said.

One WSU veterinarian, Dr. Nickol Finch, has worked extensively with Zehm’s birds over the past few years.

Finch confirmed the techniques Zehm uses are one legitimate avenue to helping restore a bird’s trust in people and other birds.

The path to healing for an abused bird largely depends on how the bird is reacting, Finch said.

For example, a cockatoo who won’t come out of its cage because it has been beaten too many times may begin to trust again by having someone sit outside its cage, she said. She calls this technique desensitizing.

“Some birds don’t tolerate being pets. It’s basically what they call a desensitizing technique where you try to get them desensitized to whatever is causing their problem,” said Finch.

Finch also confirmed birds can suffer from separation anxiety, as Zehm says many of her pets initially do when they come in.