Bird's Brain

Well, my boss FiNALLY decided to call. Not sure I'm going to call him back. Have yet to listen to his message. Maybe my threat of not returning to work got him to call? *shrugs*

I'm debating on whether I want to continue to work at the theater. Unless they decided to can me already.....no one has called, but they will probably wait until I show up there.

My niece found this injured bird in the street. She managed to scoop it up in a towel. Had to have been injured pretty bad for it to let her do that.

She is a lot like me. When I was little, that's all I ever did was play in the ground. Play with bugs. Animals. Reptiles. Anything that I could get my grubby little kid hands on. My dad has Super 8s of my back, bent over or on the ground, playing with various bugs. He was very good at video taping the back of me. Anyway, I am in the videos on the steps picking up the ants. Or playing with worms. Or whatever else was around. Nice to know my niece likes the same things.

Well she decides she wants to take it to a place that can fix it, like they have on the Animal Planet!. We had to explain to her that we didn't have those rehab places around here. I suppose we could have called, and explained that a ten year old girl wanted to help this bird, but we didn't. Plus the places we have would have charged a fee to come get it and most likely not help it.

He was pretty hurt. He cocked his head upside down and around, almost a total 360. Um, birds' heads don't move that way. Plus his cheek right under the one eye was all busted out. He kept cocking his head upside down so he could I assume use his other eye to see because I doubt he could see out of that one. I wish I had my camera but of course I didnt. It looked freaky. He tried to fly a few times but his feathers were all busted up and broken. He would just hop pathetically and erratically on the porch. I picked him up to hold him so he wouldn't hurt himself anymore.

With bird in hand I did a look-see without hurting him more. It wasn't promising from what I gathered. I put him down, to perhaps see if he was only bruised (I had several birds who used to fly into a patio door and would be stunned for a few minutes, feathers all askew, and they then managed to fly away ok). But nope not this little guy. Looked like his head was hanging by a thread. He wasn't going to get far.

Since we couldn't find a place to take him, and had to explain that even though he was important, most places wouldn't help fix him because he wasn't someone's pet and they would not think he was important. I explained that sometimes nature has to take its course, and that he will either live on his own, or die.

Of course I told the other adults we could simply put him out of his misery but no one liked how I would do that. Hey. I felt like it was cruel to watch him with his head barely hanging on.......waiting for some cat to do him in. But the majority (and the ten year old) prevailed. We didn't want him to get run over, so I scooped him back up in the towel. I let my niece carry him gently (made sure she put her hands exactly how I had them so she wouldn't hurt him more) and we walked to the back of their apartment complex. We then placed him under a tree, where he stood up and looked all cockeyed at us. He was eyeballing how to get back into the air. but he wasn't doing it. He just stayed there until we left. Wouldn't even take off or walk away.

I hate seeing animals in pain. And I know it sounds cruel, but I would have not felt bad about taking him out of his misery. If I saw a person's head flopping around on their chest, that would really freak me out and want to put him out of his misery! But I also didn't want a ten year old thinking I was cruel. Plus she did want to help it so we decided that it might be able to get better on its own (highly unlikely but it made her feel like she was helping it).

THe neighbors were funny. Both women and they kept jumping every time the bird fluttered around. My niece was just watching, wanting to hold it and help it. Of course, get a huge spider that is hurt that's a WHOLE different story.

What made spiders so scary? They really aren't.

Anyway, I just thought it was cute how she wanted to take it to a place like they did on Animal Planet. Who knows what she'll find next......