Risk assessment

When I arrived to the Vet's this morning I was greeted with cacophony of miaowing, barking and a strange, howling sound. In the back room, where the clients' cages were, I noticed three pairs of eyes staring at me; dog's, cat's and bird's. I didn't recognize the large bird with a long beak, but I soon discovered that the hollow howling noise emerged from it (wasn't sure of the gender either). I opened the cat's cage first and she (fluffy Persian) jumped straight into my arms, clinging on to me like a monkey, sharp nails digging into my skin trough my jumper. It took me a while to separate myself from the cat, and by the time I placed cat to a clean cage, my face was licked clean from the morning moisturizer. Next I took the dog (small, interesting mix breed of "God knows what") out and started cleaning his cage. Luckily he made no attempts to escape and co-operated well, so that was a tad easier task. I left the most challenging cage for last. Icing on the cake, so to speak. I ventured closer to the cage, trying to give out my most soothing voice repertoire. When I extended my hand towards the cage, the bird lashed out and nearly chopped my hand off with her/his beak. In this line of work one has to develop quick reflexes (mostly via trial and error- bruises, scratches etc.), so I managed to keep my hand intact. But I was faced with the dilemma. How to change a big bird with lethal weapon of a beak to the next cage without ending up to A&E myself? I decided to wait for an inspiration. Meanwhile I was determined to at least give the bird something to drink. I filled in a big syringe with water and gingerly slided the syringe between the holes of the cage towards the bird's mouth. It felt like a weird fencing battle, but somehow I managed to get the bird to drink some of the water. As no inspiration emerged by the time the first clients started to arrive, I decided to leave the bird cage cleaning operation until later, when I had some assistance. I had no desire to be a wounded hero.