Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Bluebird of Happiness!
A few weeks ago as we were driving down from Hillside, we spotted a bald eagle perched atop a small spruce. He was a small eaglet showing some signs of distress from the January cold. His feathers were coated with snow and he appeared to be shivering. I wondered if he had some type of injury that had prevented him from migrating to a warmer winter abode. When we came back an hour later, he was nowhere to be seen. I could not help wondering if some misguided soul had enticed him to stay the winter in Anchorage by feeding him.
It brought back memories of a baby bluebird my youngest child had rescued. It was floundering on the ground in a neighborhood filled with cats since a vet lived there and had adopted a host of orphaned kittens. There were also lots of snakes about. In a different locale I would have suggested leaving the bird alone, but this one had fallen to the ground at the wrong time in the wrong place. As dangerous as the cats were, the snakes may have posed a greater danger. When Harvey Couch, who was the Sam Walton of the early twentieth century, was a young teenager he contracted with the local grocer to provide him a daily quota of eggs. One day when he went to the henhouse to gather his eggs, there was none to be found. He looked at the ground and saw the slithering track of a large chicken snake. He was furious. He wanted revenge. Since the snake was very large and filled with eggs, Harvey knew he could not have gone very far. He tracked it down a couple hundred yards away. The snake was lethargic and had numerous egg-size bulges up and down his body. He not only killed the snake, he was determined to retrieve his eggs as well. He carefully slit open the belly of the snake and delicately removed each egg. He washed them and took them to the grocer. Right then everyone knew he has going to be a successful entrepreneur. Since then I have watched several snakes coil themselves around small trees and climb up to a nest or nesting box and have a gourmet meal.
The baby bluebird that Cindy had rescued now had a safe refuge. However, it needed to be taught to eat and fly. It showed its survival skills by quickly adapting to a diet of hamburger meat, which was proffered up on a toothpick. After a few days it was able to fly two or three feet at a time. It needed a name. He was christened Slimer after a character in Ghostbusters, for obvious reasons. Slimer soon found a home away from his cage—a ceiling fan that we prudently covered with an old towel. When anyone reached up to put him back in his cage for the night, he started shrieking, spitting out a slew of expletives and little bird profanities to let us know that he was big enough to stay up past our bedtime. We knew that if he could only learn to catch his own food, we would feel safe to release him back into the wilds. Since his diet consisted solely of raw hamburger served up on a toothpick skewer, we knew that our work was cut out for us. I took him out to the compost pile and racked back the leaves, exposing hundreds of earthworms. I set his cage down and removed the bottom. He was face to face with a wiggling smorgasbord of earthworms. Slimer showed no interest whatsoever. I speared one with a toothpick and held it up to his beak. All I received in return was a severe tongue-lashing peppered with some more of his bird profanities. After repeating the routine for several days, he still showed zero interest in his proposed new diet. I was beginning to despair that he would ever learn to fend for himself. Just then a small moth flew into his cage. He went into frenzy. He grabbed it out of mid-air and devoured it in less than two seconds. He was now ready for his big day. We put him in his cage and covered it with a towel and drove to Logoly State Park. We parked his cage beneath a small gum tree and removed the bottom. Then we set the cage to one side. He flew up and perched on a branch of the gum—just about ceiling fan high and started serenading us with a few well chosen bluebird notes. Then he looked up and there was no ceiling. He flew a few feet higher. Then he looked up and saw only blue sky. As he flew away never to return, we all shed a few tears hoping that we had done enough to return him safely to his rightful home. Somewhere there's a bluebird of happiness.
A few weeks ago as we were driving down from Hillside, we spotted a bald eagle perched atop a small spruce. He was a small eaglet showing some signs of distress from the January cold. His feathers were coated with snow and he appeared to be shivering. I wondered if he had some type of injury that had prevented him from migrating to a warmer winter abode. When we came back an hour later, he was nowhere to be seen. I could not help wondering if some misguided soul had enticed him to stay the winter in Anchorage by feeding him.
It brought back memories of a baby bluebird my youngest child had rescued. It was floundering on the ground in a neighborhood filled with cats since a vet lived there and had adopted a host of orphaned kittens. There were also lots of snakes about. In a different locale I would have suggested leaving the bird alone, but this one had fallen to the ground at the wrong time in the wrong place. As dangerous as the cats were, the snakes may have posed a greater danger. When Harvey Couch, who was the Sam Walton of the early twentieth century, was a young teenager he contracted with the local grocer to provide him a daily quota of eggs. One day when he went to the henhouse to gather his eggs, there was none to be found. He looked at the ground and saw the slithering track of a large chicken snake. He was furious. He wanted revenge. Since the snake was very large and filled with eggs, Harvey knew he could not have gone very far. He tracked it down a couple hundred yards away. The snake was lethargic and had numerous egg-size bulges up and down his body. He not only killed the snake, he was determined to retrieve his eggs as well. He carefully slit open the belly of the snake and delicately removed each egg. He washed them and took them to the grocer. Right then everyone knew he has going to be a successful entrepreneur. Since then I have watched several snakes coil themselves around small trees and climb up to a nest or nesting box and have a gourmet meal.
The baby bluebird that Cindy had rescued now had a safe refuge. However, it needed to be taught to eat and fly. It showed its survival skills by quickly adapting to a diet of hamburger meat, which was proffered up on a toothpick. After a few days it was able to fly two or three feet at a time. It needed a name. He was christened Slimer after a character in Ghostbusters, for obvious reasons. Slimer soon found a home away from his cage—a ceiling fan that we prudently covered with an old towel. When anyone reached up to put him back in his cage for the night, he started shrieking, spitting out a slew of expletives and little bird profanities to let us know that he was big enough to stay up past our bedtime. We knew that if he could only learn to catch his own food, we would feel safe to release him back into the wilds. Since his diet consisted solely of raw hamburger served up on a toothpick skewer, we knew that our work was cut out for us. I took him out to the compost pile and racked back the leaves, exposing hundreds of earthworms. I set his cage down and removed the bottom. He was face to face with a wiggling smorgasbord of earthworms. Slimer showed no interest whatsoever. I speared one with a toothpick and held it up to his beak. All I received in return was a severe tongue-lashing peppered with some more of his bird profanities. After repeating the routine for several days, he still showed zero interest in his proposed new diet. I was beginning to despair that he would ever learn to fend for himself. Just then a small moth flew into his cage. He went into frenzy. He grabbed it out of mid-air and devoured it in less than two seconds. He was now ready for his big day. We put him in his cage and covered it with a towel and drove to Logoly State Park. We parked his cage beneath a small gum tree and removed the bottom. Then we set the cage to one side. He flew up and perched on a branch of the gum—just about ceiling fan high and started serenading us with a few well chosen bluebird notes. Then he looked up and there was no ceiling. He flew a few feet higher. Then he looked up and saw only blue sky. As he flew away never to return, we all shed a few tears hoping that we had done enough to return him safely to his rightful home. Somewhere there's a bluebird of happiness.
