bird

yesterday, like quite a few days, i got home and took the dogs out into the back yard for a bit of prancing around. now, guthrie, bred as a hunting animal, cruised straight over to a corner of the tiny backyard and found something trapped between a garbage can and the screen fence. that something was flapping to beat all, smacking guthrie as hard across his open mouth as it could. by the time i got there a small bird and guthrie were face to face. i managed to shoo guthrie and max back into the house and went over to check on the little bird. i know what you're thinking and yes, i know not to pick up a baby bird fallen from a nest. i know the mother bird won't love a baby all stank up with human scent. i know. but that's not entirely true, firstly, and then this little guy, mostly real bird feathers and only a little bit down, was hopping furiously on his left leg, dragging a broken, bleeding right leg behind him. that particular leg had the look of something completely unrelated to this bird, facing a different way than any reasonable leg would. and i knew that the right thing to do was go back in the house. let nature be nature. mind my own, as the kids would say. but then this little guy, who was already reminding me of a spaniel we kept as a kid- a victim of some sort of car accident, brought to us with a front leg unrecognizable as something belonging to an animal- this bird i didn't even know at all, wedged himself face first into a corner and just stood there. stupid bird. not even trying to be fair. not even trying to let nature take its course. jerk. he sat there just like max, clueless, stuck.

so i called my dad. because my dad knows what to do. when i was little my dad helped us nurse flocks of baby birds, a family of orphaned bunnies and whatever dogs came our way. i left a message for him and ran to the store to get eggs. sure, i know better. any baby bird more than a few days old isn't eating the white of an egg. it's eating whatever the mom is barfing up. but i wasn't thinking and besides, the co-op doesn't have puree of pre-eaten worms. i hurried back, built a nest of leaves in an old flower pot and ransacked the house for a dropper of some sort. i know. i know. you know better. i know better. what did you expect me to do? he was stuck in a corner and defenseless. so i picked him up. and he did exactly what max would have done. he nosed himself right back into the corner, looking completely surprised to end up in the same predicament. and no matter what you and i both know about birds, you can't expect me to ignore a feathered version of max.

the only dropper i found was a huge turkey baster, something about a foot long and nearly as large around as the bird. i filled it with water and held the little guy under it. i shot about a gallon of water across the top of his head, not even near his beak. if you've never seen an angry bird, let me tell you, it's more intimidating than you'd think. much more. i told him i was sorry, resisted the urge to pet the top of his head, held the baster up again and dropped a few small drops onto his beak. i have to admit i was surprised when he opened his beak wide. if you've never stared down the inside of a baby bird, it's pretty. the inside of a starling's beak is blinding yellow. it's what the word yellow means, i think. yellow. but i couldn't get it to eat any worms. i actually went out and dug up an earthworm. they're sad things to look at this time of year. lean, small. i diced up the worm and did my best to look motherly and avian. no dice. so now i'm in deep. i've killed for this guy.

i ended up looking up info on how to raise a baby starling. you'd be surprised what you can find out there in the internet if you ask the right questions. turns out baby birds of this sort can eat dog food. i'm not kidding. the good kind. fortunately we know some dogs with fancy palates and had the right kind. so i left him this morning, out on the back porch, chirpy in his nest, a bit of dog food in his belly. i fully expected to come home and find him the same, only maybe a little hungrier. what i found instead was a bird that looked smaller than i'd ever seen him look in my whole day of knowing him, flattened out in the nest, a wing partly extended. just still. no wildly waving beak. no blinking creepy bird eyes. just the part that i would bury sitting there. and at first i was mad, mostly at me. not because i killed a bird. i don't think i did. i likely prolonged the inevitable. but i was mad because now i'd spend some time missing a stupid animal i didn't even know. mad at the bird for falling out of the nest and for being something i wanted so much. but in the end, there's really nothing to think except that i held a wild animal, which is like nothing else in the world, and i gave that animal a little food, looked right down the bright yellow tunnel of beak and on into him. there's a chance that somewhere in the realistic part of my brain i knew already he'd probably die before i even picked him up. that doesn't change anything.