Little known fact: I was supposed to be a veterinarian. At least that was what the bets were as I was growing up. It seemed every other day, I was bringing home some stray animal or another. There was the wild mallard I befriended in my backyard, the labrador I found wandering the street, a gopher I rescued from a bunch of kid throwing rock and brought home in my baseball glove (it promptly bit my brother Ben on the finger and he had to get a rabies shot, but that's another story)...
And then there was Star. I was out riding my bike in the neighborhood one day, and came across a couple kids with two baby birds in a box. They had fallen from a palm tree, had no feathers to speak of and were not looking in great shape. I took them home, wrapped them in towels and put them under a desk lamp on the head of my bead to keep them warm. One of them didn't make it through the night. But the other one was still hanging on...and it was hungry.
I'm not sure how we figured it out, or if we were even right, but it turns out the bird was a starling. So, of course, I named him Star...gimme a break, I was 8. I moved Star to a big cardboard box, fed him ground up chicken feed mush with an eye dropper and, for the next several weeks, I did my best to be a mommy bird. Despite his rough start, I like to think Star had a pretty good life. He learned to fly by jumping off of the top bunk of our bunk beds and pretty much got to poop all over most of the books in my bookshelf, all the while living in air conditioned comfort while the rest of his kind were sweltering in the desert summer heat. Eventually, he got too big to keep roaming freely in my house, so Star had to move to a neighbor's house where he could live with all their other birds. I'm not sure what happened to him after that, as I went back to school and moved on the way only kids can do.
But I've always kept a soft spot for baby birds, a fact that has been killing me this year. Several bird families chose our garden as their new home, and over the course of the spring we have been able to watch, and hear, all the new baby birds in our yard. But, with heartbreaking regularity, there have been casualties...learning to fly from a bunk bed is much safer than falling from a nest in a ficus.
I have done my best to stay out of it, letting nature take its course, but yesterday pushed me to the limit. Sharon and I discovered a baby mockingbird in our driveway. It did not seem to have the use of its legs. If I had been able to catch it, I would have brought it inside, but it had enough strength in its wings to flutter away from us. Eventually, I had to admit there was probably little I'd be able to do to save it, as it was clearly hurt. We sat on the front porch and watched the other mockingbirds fly frantically above the lost bird, listened to their heartbreaking cries for as long as we could stand it, and then went back inside.
Sharon said: "This probably happens all the time every year. We're just noticing it because this year we're paying attention."
I'm sure she's right. Being aware of one's environment is not all about sunlight and roses. A good part of it is about accepting there are some things you just can't do anything about.
I get it...but today we're going to go buy a couple birdhouses from the craft store. Maybe next year, it'll help keep a couple little ones safer.
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