Champion against Teflon
Teflon definitely kills birds so this might be like the canaries in the mines. If you want to be more believable, you might want to add a few facts to your Teflon flu. Namely it depends on if the pan is empty. If you're young and your friends are young and a bit irresponsible or not knowing, they may heat an empty Teflon pan. I once clocked a Teflon pan hitting 600 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 1 minute. Unfortunately, and this is official chemistry, Teflon starts to outgas - that's the technical term - somewhere in the mid 500's F, around 550 or so, I forget if it's 530 or 570. And that's so for even the most expensive, brand new pots.
Supposedly this was harmless to most humans but this is now starting to be re-examined. It definitely will kill small pet birds and even big ones awfully quickly. And even through closed doors so shutting a door is not enough to protect pet birds. It's a gas that will be killing them.
I think there is some truth to your story. And after I ran my own experiment, I threw out my Teflon pans and bought some fine glbuttware and the occasional stainless steel piece. Nothing is safer than glbuttware. I prefer that nice looking amber Corning stuff. For me, I don't do the sort of cooking that I guess Teflon makes super easy.
