Chirp and Hope

Greetings friends, I join you today from a sunny patch in my backyard. It's about 78 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, I'm sitting on a blue camping chair with my feet kicked up on a cushy outdoor ottoman. The lake is calm, the birds are chirping, the fish are jumping, the dragonflies are giving each other piggyback rides, (aren't they playful?).

I have responsibilities in the house, but truth be told, one of us needs to be outside whenever the kids are in the lake. The kids have been in the lake at every possible moment, so here I am parked with my laptop, my Kindle and a few crumbs from a much enjoyed chipwich--a sacrifice only a mother can make.

Speaking of mothering, yesterday morning, I heard a relentless chirping that seemed to be coming from the master bathroom. Max and I noticed that whenever we stepped outside rather than the noise growing, it got quieter, muffled. It didn’t take too much detective work to realize there were birds in my ceiling (different than bats in my belfry, you crazy jokers). Well there was nothing this damsel in distress could do about it, even though my heart went out to the little tweeties, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to get into the ceiling and save those creatures. Once Mike got home there was some eyelash batting, some sweet talking and soon he was trudging up the stairs with ladder in tow. It seems some momma bird had made a nest in our bathroom fan, which she accessed from a vent near the roof of our house. At this point in the story you might suggest, “Hey it’s survival of the fittest, baby, if you’re stupid enough to make your nest in an air vent, you ain’t worth saving”. To this I say, if we let every child suffer because of their parents stupidity, humanity would have died out long ago. Now you think “Touche, Aimee” and you let me continue my story.

Mike reaches in to the fan area and pulls out a tiny limp baby bird. It was so adorable, small and clearly on its last legs. It was covered in grey downy feathers and couldn’t have been more than a day or two old. That sweet bird, who had been chirping all day, lay still in Mike’s hand. He was barely breathing, not chirping at all, eyes closed. It didn’t look good. We headed out onto the porch with him. The kids had a nest that they had found weeks before and they left it sitting in a Swan shaped planter on the front porch. There was some serious discussion as to what to do with the bird. Madison named the little creature Chirp. Mike put it in the nest and then put the nest in a nearby bush, where he thought there was another nest and perhaps another bird might take care of Chirp. I wasn’t really satisfied with this, but decided to acquiesce for the time being. In all honesty Mike was sure that Chirp wouldn’t make it through the night and I was beginning to agree.

We went back in to the house and headed upstairs only to hear another bird chirping in our ceiling. Once again Mike reached up and found a sweet little bird, this one had more life than the first. He took her to the nest after we named her Hope. As soon as he went to put Hope down, our little friend Chirp stretched up with his little baby bird mouth wide open looking for food. Definitely a good sign. He may look all tough, but that softy husband of mine was back in the house with both birds in tow. He had placed their nest into that Swan planter I mentioned earlier. I called the vet who gave me the number of a wildlife rescue. Of course the rescue agency was closed. We did some research on the internet and found out that we could feed the birds cat food soaked in water. We read that we should use a toothpick to feed them, not a dropper or syringe, and we read that baby birds need to eat every two hours. The birds took to the cat food like a goat takes to a coke can and all was well. There was conflicting advice on what to do about night feeding. Some sites said that they would need to eat through the night, just not as frequently as every two hours. Other sites suggested they would sleep well if they were in a dark place. No matter what all the sites agreed that they needed to be kept warm. So we stuck them in the oven at 200 degrees. No, no, I’m totally kidding, we wrapped them up and put them in our closet out of the reach of our cats.

We read that you could feed your baby birds certain bugs including flies if you removed their wings. So Mike caught a fly and tore off its wings, put it on my bedside table and suggested I give it to one of them during the first night feeding. Of all the jokes I have told in my blogs this, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.

It’s been a long time since I have had to get up and do a middle of the night feeding, but at 3:00 with no help of an alarm clock, I startled awake. I listened carefully but there was no chirping coming from my closet. I am not going to lie, it crossed my mind to roll over and go back to sleep, but I thought “What if they aren’t chirping because they are dead!” On my way to my closet I gave the dead fly a glance, but really how could I decide who got the fly. Every mother out there can agree with me that you can’t give one baby a treat like a wingless fly and leave the other baby without. So I left the fly where it was and thought Mike could handle that during the 5:00 am shift. I crept into the closet, carefully closing the door behind me so the cats wouldn’t get in and looked at the babies. First I checked to see if they were breathing and they were. Their eyes were closed and they were sound asleep. Just as the first time your baby sleeps through the night, I was at a loss, do I wake them to eat or do I just leave them be? I decided they had to eat, so I took some of the wet cat food, put it on a toothpick and started tapping at their beaks with it. Then I started making some horrid clicking noises, that sounded nothing like a momma bird, but it was the best I could do standing in my closet at 3:00 a.m. The birds scooted in to each other and away from me. I gave up, they clearly weren’t hungry.

This morning the wildlife people called us back and told us to put the babies on the roof as close to the vent as possible. They confirmed my belief that it is an old wives’ tale that a mother bird would not come back to their babies if they had been handled. Mike set the whole planter on the roof and we have for the most part left them alone. The wildlife people have assured us that if they chirp loudly enough momma bird will find them. Sure enough, we have seen a beautiful little bird circle our roof several times today and she eventually landed in the planter. So it looks like the wildlife people were correct, little Chirp and Hope will be fed by their real mom and will eventually fly off to become the wild birds they were meant to be.

On a side note we remain hopeful that the swan planter won’t confuse the water fowl living on the lake, as we don’t need any big Canadian Geese trying to mate with our plastic planter. But, if by some miracle they try and succeed, at least we will know how to take care of the babies.