At a pet shop on South 8^th Street in Colorado Springs, Jennifer Piccin-Shaw extracts a blue-headed pionus parrot from his cage and gives him a kiss.

“Hi, handsome,” Piccin-Shaw says. Blue, the parrot, seems to agree with her assessment.

Piccin-Shaw gently swaddles Blue in a small towel and places him in her lap, speaking to him in soothing tones. The parrot knows what’s coming, and he’s not looking forward to it, but he likes and trusts Piccin-Shaw. So he doesn’t make a fuss as she turns on a small, rotary tool that resembles a miniature sander and begins to trim Blue’s nails.

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“Not every bird needs their nails trimmed every month,” says Piccin-Shaw, a mobile animal groomer. “Some birds, I see on a monthly basis because as soon as I trim their nails to soften them, they go home and start chewing on them to re-sharpen them.”

Conventional pet groomers aren’t hard to find. A dog or cat owner who wants their pet’s fur washed or trimmed can go to any number of pet shops. But what does someone do if they need similar care for a guinea pig, a turtle, a lizard or a South American parrot?

Perhaps they turn to Piccin-Shaw, a traveling exotic pet groomer with more than 30 years of animal care experience ranging from zookeeping to research to veterinary tech work.

“I’ve loved animals for as long as I can remember,” said Piccin-Shaw, whose first word was “dog.”

“I do all the exotics — birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, lizards — a bit of everything. I love dogs and cats, but exotic animals are my thing.”

A native of Colorado Springs, Piccin-Shaw earned a bachelor’s of science in wildlife biology from Colorado State University before taking a job at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, working with everything from gorillas to lizards to rhinos.

In the ensuing decades, Piccin-Shaw worked at veterinary hospitals, research facilities, retail stores and wholesale providers, developing a keen sense for what she likes — and what she doesn’t.

For instance, she doesn’t groom dogs or cats.

“I’m just not comfortable with it,” she said. “Give me the biggest macaw or the biggest iguana, and I’m fine. But dogs and cats? Nope.”

About four years ago, after seeing that there was a market for her particular niche in animal care, Piccin-Shaw opened Jen’s Exotic Pet Services. As her business has grown, she has broadened the radius of her grooming events to include Westminster, Parker, Lakewood, Golden, Commerce City and Colorado Springs.

Business ebbs and flows according to the varying needs of pet owners, she said. But he has built a solid customer base, and on Sunday afternoon, the animals kept on coming. Some owners stuck around to watch her work, while others roamed around the pet store.

As she works, she sits inside a portable grooming pod that she can zip shut to keep skittish birds from flying from her grasp.

“In some of the stores I groom at, there are 15- or 20-foot ceilings,” she said. “So I needed to come up with a solution where I wouldn’t have to worry about chasing them around a store. This way, I don’t have to wrap them so tight.”

Piccin-Shaw’s services aren’t limited to grooming. She also does boarding and pet-sitting, and she holds occasional workshops on animal care and behavior (though she is considering transitioning to virtual workshops). On Sunday, as she trimmed the nails and beak of a white-bellied caique, she gave pointers on how to help the bird learn to fly.

“Try a few practice landings on a bed or a couch,” she told the owner. “Flying is easy. Landing is the hard part.”

Piccin-Shaw said she enjoys everything about the job she created for herself, from handling the animals (which she calls “kiddos”), to building relationships with their guardians.

“I love interacting with the animals in this manner versus hospitals or zoos,” she said. “And I like being able to answer questions for their owners. You don’t have a lot of exotic veterinarians out there, and with the internet, there’s a lot of misinformation floating around.”

Customers said they value the peace of mind that comes with being able to trust the care of their exotic loved ones to someone with a genuine affection for unconventional animals.

“She’s a godsend,” said Brett Guthrie, Blue’s owner. “If she leaves the country, we’ll follow her.”

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