Authentic Threads

Last night my cat gleefully ran across the porch with something in his mouth. It looked sort of like a mouse. I was going to let him keep it if it was a mouse, but it was a baby bird. I grabbed the cat, told him to drop the bird, and threw the cat inside.

I stood back and the bird hopped around on the porch. He didn’t seem injured. I was hoping his parents would come. He hopped, hopped, hopped, like a little froggy over to the step, down one step. I sat there, just watching over him, trying to be in the background. He hopped behind a planter and then he seemed to feel safe and sat there for awhile. Then he hopped right in the middle of the giant sticky spider web between the planter and the house. He was caught and struggling, so I reached in to get him. “Only for you, baby bird.”

When I reached in to get him, he let out a huge squawk! Instantly, a gang of five cats from two doors down were there, in the next door neighbors yard, looking through the chain link fence at us. It was like a game of red light, green light because when I looked at them, they froze, not even blinking. Green light! I walked around to the front porch to wait for my mom to get home. The cats followed.

I discovered that if I folded him up in my shirt, he seemed much happier. In fact, he really seemed to get cozy. He didn’t like me to grab him or open his cozy pocket to let in light. He’d sqawk and the cats would perk up.

When my mom got home, she called a friend of hers who rehabilitates birds. He gave us some advice which helped us understand why we have never successfully rescued a baby bird before. He told us that you should NEVER, EVER, give a baby bird water. They will choke on it. I thought baby birds were just really hard to keep alive. Nope, we were just accidentally drowning them. Great. But not for little Henri! No, no, a better fate for him. No little bowl of water in HIS cage!

Actually, there are a lot of important tips about how to rescue a baby bird. Read about how to take care of a baby starling at starlingtalk.com. The advice on that site matches the advice my mom’s friend Hugh gave us. (Good job, Hugh!)

We were going to name Henri “Hugh” in honor of Hugh, but there is just no denying that he is an Henri.

One mistake we have made, is that we have held him. Last night my mom was upset with me for holding him wrapped up in my shirt. “Just put him in his basket!” “But he’s happy here!” She thought he would suffocate. But she just couldn’t resist the pull of little Henri. This morning she came in and told me she had put him IN her shirt. “Next to your skin?” “Yep, right next to my skin..” I looked at her with narrowed eyes. “He really liked it! He seemed happy there.”

Later I saw Henri in her shirt, and I have to admit, it was the cutest thing on the planet. She dropped him right in the middle of her chest and there he was, with his little fluffy head and cheeky beak, looking up out of her bosom. He really did seem happy there!

We’d like to keep him, but if you want to release a starling back into the wild, you really can’t treat him so tamely. You have to 1. Raise him with other birds and 2. Resist picking him up. We couldn’t resist for long, so we’ll be taking him to the bird rehabilitators today.

Thanks for hopping into our lives, Henri!

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