Birds

I have a thing about birds. There was a turkey vulture episode a couple of years ago. . .I'll write about that another time.

Anyway, on Saturday, before I mowed the lawn, I was out scooping. There was a dead baby bird under the cedar tree, and I screamed, of course. Part of the reason I screamed was because I was surprised, but the other part was because I knew I would have to pick up the dead bird. Yuck! So anyway, after a couple more screams, I managed to dispose of the bird.

On Monday, I came home from work and was playing flippy-flopper with Lucy. She played a couple of tosses, then ran under the cedar tree, and, you guessed it, she found a baby bird. Alive. She 'played' with it for a minute before I could distract her and get her inside the house. I went to check on the bird, and it was alive, despite Lucy rolling it onto its back, but it didn't look good. I didn't have the stomach to do what needed to be done, so I called a neighbor. He picked it up, and it didn't look as bad as I thought. I don't think he had the heart to kill it, either. We put it on the outside of the fence so Lucy wouldn't get it, and hopefully the mother bird would come for it. I had to go out that night. . .when I came home, the baby bird was dead. I should have been braver earlier in the day and put it out of its pain.

Tuesday, when I came home after work, I noticed two birds hopping along the fence. Upon closer inspection, I noticed yet another baby bird out of its nest and in my yard. Sigh. I had some gardening to do, and I wanted to leave the birds to take care of themselves, so I brought Lucy out on the long leash. I tied her to the fence so she could be outside with me, but far from the birds. When I was done gardening, I called the neighbors and their sixth grade daughter came over to help me with the bird. After much scrambling (it could run really fast and fly a couple of inches off the ground), we caught the baby bird in a box and put it under a bush outside the fence. We dug up some worms for the bird, but when we got back, it was gone. We looked, but couldn't find it.

K. and I watched the nest in the cedar tree for about an hour. There are a couple more babies up there. I think another bird (darn blackbirds!) is pushing these baby birds out of the nest. I hope the others learn to fly soon so I don't have to save anymore of these birds from Lucy.