Birds: Our Fine Feathered Colleagues

We spent yesterday afternoon visiting assorted businesses to purchase various essential supplies and miscellaneous important tasks. We hit the bread store to stock up on cheap day-old bread that I can freeze and thaw as needed since no one can tell the difference between frozen and fresh bread, or at least I can’t and that’s all the matters. We hit the grocery store to buy groceries and engage in the Iowa tradition of returning empty pop cans.* We hit the bank to deposit a check and, more importantly, pick up a free cookie because Friday is Cookie Day at our bank, and those free cookies ensure our loyalty better than any favorable interest rate or well-lit parking lot could. Upon returning home, our wonderful neighbor approached as I was releasing Abbie from her car seat.

“Can I ask you something?” she said. As I told her to go ahead, my mind buzzed with the possibilities of what a mother of seven, a woman who had spent the past 14 consecutive years raising at least one child under the age of 2, could possibly have to learn from me. If anything, I should spend my days shadowing her so I can pick her brain for answers to the millions of questions I have like “How can I encourage language development?” or “How can I prevent her from eating dog food?” or “How do I not go insane caring for a toddler all day?”

Not surprisingly, her question had very little to do with children. While playing in the park, one of her kids found a bird with a broken wing, and she wanted to know what I thought they could do for it. Since our home contains four animals, not counting fish or the occasional mouse I see scurrying around the basement, we are the intuitive choice to approach with animal questions, never mind that birds are close to my least favorite pet, ranking just below non-cute rodents, like the Ethiopian Ebola Rat. The best thing to do in my opinion was to place the bird back in the park with a bell around its neck or some other device to attract nearby stray cats to put it out of its misery quickly because there was nothing we could do for an injured wild bird without a degree in ornithology and some very tiny surgical instruments. Not that I said that. I told her to keep the bird out of her house to prevent bringing parasites into her home and call my vet to see what they recommended. She called, and they recommended what I was thinking, minus the bell; it’s really hard to care for an injured wild bird, and, awful as it sounds, you don’t want to go to a lot of trouble for a common wild bird.

The family dutifully returned the bird to the park. The kids tried giving it worms to eat, a gesture that a stray cat somewhere doubtless appreciated. Her younger kids had trouble letting it go, and she said she would have cried if she were that age too. Honestly, I might have done the same thing at that age. I remember my family taking in a hurt bird when I was young, probably saving it from being eaten that night, and instead dooming it to die in our garage that night. Leaving a hurt animal to die is hard for kids, even now that they have “The Lion King” to teach them about the circle of life. I’ll just chalk this up as another lesson I’m glad I don’t have to teach Abbie yet. Her greatest worry is whether or not today is Cookie Day.

* Iowans will gladly endure any hardship, including congregating in cramped rooms with astonishingly sticky floors and handling aluminum cans decorated with a base coat of dried fructose and a top coat of pet hair and other assorted detritus, as long as we get our nickel back.