By Erin Unger

UW News Lab

The lights go out. After some rustling and squawking they come on again. Kramer, a small, shiny-eyed cockatiel, frees himself from a towel held open by Dr. Bruce Singbeil.

“Birds can’t see in the dark,” he says.

Turning the lights off makes being removed from their cages by strange hands a little less stressful. Kramer stands in the corner of his cage, looking shaken, but perkier than when he came in with an injured foot.

“Birds are delicate,” Singbeil says. Therefore, treating them is a delicate and often more creative task than just working with dogs and cats, and that’s just one of the things he likes about his job.

The veterinarian sees a wide range of pets, both common and exotic. In addition, Singbeil is the only board-certified poultry doctor in Washington state.

“I know how to grow them, breed them and feed them,” he said.

He operates from Bellevue Center of Veterinary Medicine, a clinic off Bel-Red Road that he opened in 2003. Singbeil did his residency in avian medicine at the University of California at Davis, but also learned poultry from his grandmother on a farm back in Iowa.

“We raised them for eggs and we’d eat some of them too,” he said. “She taught me how to work with them.”

Since working on the farm, he has circumnavigated the globe. From pharmaceutical companies to outfits dealing with poultry genetics, he has worked in 26 different countries using his avian expertise. He has dealt with bird flu in Asia and poultry farms in Brazil and Korea. As exciting as it was, the companies kept gobbling each other up, he said, and spending chunks of every month away from his family was wearing on him.

“I said, damn, I have to get off these airplanes,” he said. “…So I decided to go back and do what we’re doing here.”

For now, dogs and cats pay the bills, but he has spayed an 8-foot-long green iguana that was longer than the examining table.

“For Christmas boarding we had a turtle, a frog, rabbits, a few species of birds and cats,” he said.

Singbeil has also had the pleasure of treating an 85-pound turkey named Whitefang who had infected feet. Its owners came all the way from Arlington; however, he has gotten calls from as far south as Enumclaw too.

“Those people struggle to find a vet that takes them seriously,” he said. These animals are as much of a pet to these people as a cat or dog, he said, and are no longer barnyard animals.

“I enjoy it,” he said.

It looks like he does. Before turning off the lights and returning the cockatiel to its cage, Singbeil clips an identification band from Kramer’s swollen leg and sponges the blood from its wound. The leg isn’t fractured, Singbeil says.

Kramer is one lucky bird. Singbeil soon goes to work trimming his nails. Small, but loud, Kramer squawks in protest.

“You’re welcome,” Singbeil replies.

Erin Unger is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.