August 26, 2020

“When birds grow, you can train them to stay around you and not fly far off. But I start training them before they can fly. That is for them to realize that I give them freedom and show them the places. At the same time, I train them to stay with me and not fly away. I teach the birds to live outside the cages.
My love for animals started at an early age. They have always given me a special feeling. Back when we lived in Baghdad, we had a big garden. Whatever animals I saw there, I would take care of, be it turtles, hedgehogs, dogs or cats. After we moved to Sulaimani, I didn’t have space to take care of animals, which was very difficult for me, it made me really upset.”

“Another terrible situation is when people ward off animals because of the Coronavirus. Someone told me of a family who had thrown out two birds and that their mother had died. This is terrible because these animals cannot give you the virus.
Although I used to rescue cats and dogs more often, this year I am mostly rescuing birds. Once when it was windy, I had not closed my window well, it opened and one of my birds flew out, even though he didn’t mean to fly off because he still couldn’t fly well, but he had gone to a neighbor’s house. I found him in 24 hours through social media and animals’ organizations. I once took Ascander with me to a trip in nature. I saw that even though he was scared, he was still very happy to fly in nature. I got in contact with a few places after that so that they could publish Ascander’s story and show people that birds’ home is not a cage and you can train them to be free and stay with you as well.”