No, We Don’t Want to Take Over Mickaboo
Our Goals are Transparency, Accountability and the Welfare of the Birds Mickaboo leadership continues to misrepresent our position. This is not about money being spent on sick wild conures. It’s not about us wanting to “kill” a handful of animals because they’re costing too much money. It is about the prolonged suffering of and cruelty […]
Mickaboo in Crisis: What a Foster’s Email Tells Us About Mickaboo’s Internal Breakdown
In a recent email, a longtime Mickaboo volunteer voiced deep frustration that papilloma-positive birds needing placement are not being discussed on Discuss, Mickaboo’s discussion list, and that she is repeatedly asked to take them despite having done so for twenty years. The foster wrote that she had to turn down two of these birds recently […]
Mickaboo Leadership Discrimination: Patterns of Racial Bias in Volunteer and Foster Decisions
Summary Despite presenting itself as a welcoming parrot rescue, Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue has a pattern of exclusion, inconsistent leadership, and troubling racial bias. The case of Joi Eubanks—a highly qualified Black volunteer who was denied a coordinator role despite urgent need—highlights these systemic issues. Leadership repeatedly cited unwritten “standards,” reinstated a baseless warning on […]
Setting the Record Straight. Again.
We recently sent out a newsletter response to Mickaboo’s August newsletter. We’re posting it here. Looking Past the Spin Mickaboo’s August 2025 newsletter repeats the same rhetoric, falsehoods and we’ve already addressed, and we’ll continue to answer them as long as they keep resurfacing. It starts with an invocation of Mickaboo’s origin story. However, the […]
Five Years with Mister Buddy, and a Hard Choice About Giving
A long-term Mickaboo donor and adopter announced they would no longer support Mickaboo financially. This is their email to Mickaboo’s discuss list. Today is the fifth anniversary of our beloved Mister Buddy’s gotcha day. Starting with that first day and annually on this date ever since I have donated $1000 to Mickaboo in appreciation for the […]
Evidence Points to Retaliation Behind Volunteer Dismissals
Summary Mickaboo leadership’s claim that Vincent and Melaine were removed for refusing to provide edits to the Basic Bird Care Class doesn’t hold up to the documented record. They developed the class openly, with broad volunteer input, and had it ready for rollout by December 2024. Delays came from leadership’s own inaction and added non-essential […]
Will Mickaboo Change?
Since our first email went out to Mickaboo’s Discuss list, Mickaboo leadership’s reaction to events such as the San Francisco Chronicle article has been predictably defensive, dismissive and combative—echoing the same patterns that prompted concerns about the organization in the first place. Instead of using the article or our report as an opportunity for reflection, […]
A Month of Charges from Vet Clinic For the Birds (and a note about deslorelin implants)
Summary: We reviewed two June 2025 invoices from For the Birds (FTB), which together document over $50,000 in charges to Mickaboo. These invoices show a consistent pattern of high-cost, long-term care concentrated among the same group of birds—many of whom have been in boarding or medical care for months or years. Of the 47 birds […]
Mickaboo is Censoring Speech
Summary: A Mickaboo volunteer conducted a respectful, evidence-based review of the sensory enrichment provided to wild conures at the FTB boarding facility using a Mickaboo-released tour video. The analysis identified serious deficiencies in visual, tactile and auditory enrichment and proposed low-cost improvements rooted in best practices. Leadership responded not with engagement but by questioning the […]
Is Mickaboo Hatching Eggs?
Summary Mickaboo leadership claims to value transparency and respectful dialogue, but internal communications show a pattern of hostility toward volunteers who raise legitimate concerns. When one volunteer questioned the rationale for hatching eggs—despite the organization’s stated opposition to breeding—leadership responded with personal attacks rather than policy clarification. Evidence from Slack messages and firsthand accounts indicates […]