Flyaway, page 9
He and Daisy were clearly happy to see each other, often ending up in a sleepy little duck pile wedged next to one of the hand towels. I thought the new duck might benefit from water therapy, so twice a day I’d draw them a bath. The first swim was alarming: the new duck spun in a circle, rolled upside down, and needed a quick rescue. But with each subsequent swim he became stronger and more adept, until I started to feel “cautiously optimistic” about his chances of recovery.
When both ducks finally settled into a routine I was ready to tackle the mystery of Daisy’s identity, as when they were side by side it was fairly obvious that they were not the same species. I sat down at the computer, typed two words into Google, and closed my eyes. When I opened them there was a perfect picture of Daisy.
She was Aix sponsa: a wood duck.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t know you were a wood duck,” I told her later, “or you’d probably be a dead duck.”
There are a number of knowledgeable, intrepid souls out there who specialize in wood ducks and have their care down to a science; my friend Wendi Schendel used to raise them for a university-sponsored project in Montana, and would release up to a couple of hundred a year. But for most rehabbers, the orphaned wood duck mortality rate is above 90 percent. On one hand, I felt cool and powerful: Yes! I am Super-Rehabber! On the other, I felt a little like Rosie Ruiz, who had won the 1980 Boston Marathon by hopping onto the subway for the hard part. Sure, I’d won the Wood Duck Marathon, but I’d done it by cheating the system—something I thought about every time I heard Daisy’s furious tap dance following me down the hallway.
Then there were Null and Void, who had made great progress in bonding with each other but still hadn’t quite kicked the habit of landing on my head. I tried to enter their flight cage and feed them in a brisk and businesslike way, but it was difficult. Filled with standard young-bird joie de vivre, they carried crumpled leaves around in their beaks, stole pebbles from each other, and attacked the hanging ropes; they’d jump up and down in place, energetically flapping their wings until sheer momentum spun them around in a circle, like old-fashioned prop planes. Occasionally I’d relent, reasoning that I didn’t want them to dislike me; I’d bring them toys, like pinecones and seed pods, or toss a pebble into their water dish, inspiring furiously flaphappy bouts of bathing.
The wing of the adult robin who had lost the bird fight had healed nicely, and he was in the second flight cage with the house finch, the song sparrow, and a small group of fledgling robins who were eating on their own. Although the adult robin did not appear particularly paternal, he did provide a good example for the fledglings by eating, perching, and flying around like a robin. He also taught them how to comb through the bug pit, a square area of deep organic soil held in place by split logs. The kids would dump their containers of small earthworms and miscellaneous bugs into the bug pit, then cover them all with leaves and grass. As we watched from the outside, the adult robin would stride over and expertly turn over the leaves to find the bugs underneath while his avian students watched in fascination.
Fledgling Song Sparrow
There is nothing sweeter and more appealing than a fledgling songbird. They have an air of bright-eyed bewilderment, as if they find the strange new world around them entrancing but slightly confusing. When I first released the young robins into the flight cage, one hopped up on a perch and stood still, regarding her new surroundings with surprise. The house finch quickly joined her, but evidently didn’t receive the response he was looking for. The finch hopped to the robin’s other side, then behind her, in front of her, and finally onto her head, where he stood briefly before jumping back down to the original perch. The finch did this twice while the robin remained immobile, looking more and more perplexed.
That afternoon Jen Bowman, who had given me one of the grackles, called. “I just wanted to see how the grackle was doing,” she said. “And ask if you might have room for a fledgling cedar waxwing.”
“A cedar waxwing!” I exclaimed. “How soon can you get him here?”
Cedar waxwings must be among the most beautiful birds in the world. Their buff-colored bodies, regal crests, striking black masks, and brilliantly red and yellow scalloped tail-feather tips all give them a slightly Asian, otherworldly air. Their trilling voices are like tiny bells. They love blueberries. They travel in flocks and land together in trees, the sight of which few bird lovers can ever forget.
Jen’s waxwing had been delivered to her as a nestling with a broken leg. Now healed and feathered and eating on his own, he just needed some flight-cage time and, in a perfect world, another waxwing for company. I put him in with the finch, the sparrow, and the robins, entranced by his delicate beauty and praying to the nature gods for another waxwing. Though shy and unsteady at first, within days he was swooping, banking, and turning in midair, learning to forage by combing the flight for the berries I’d painstakingly impaled on dozens of branches each morning. When I entered the flight cage he’d fly to a high perch and look down at me with calm self-assurance, like a small, impeccably gowned emperor from the T’ang Dynasty, while I did my chores.
I tried not to stare at all of them. Prey species (such as songbirds) have eyes on the sides of their heads, giving them a greater range of vision; this way they have a better chance of seeing a predator species, whose eyes are on the front of their heads, coming toward them. In the wild, staring at a bird is a clear signal that you intend to do him serious bodily harm, and I didn’t want to cause alarm by steadily watching them all with my predatory human eyes. But I couldn’t not watch them; each one was so breathtakingly beautiful, every one of their movements so remarkable, that sometimes I ended up facing away and watching them out of the corner of my eye until the resulting headache forced me to stop. Occasionally I would pause, close my eyes, and listen to the sound of their wings. When the sparrow flew by it was like the whispered roll of an Italian r, the mysterious half sentence of an overheard conversation. I stored the wing beats of each bird in my memory, each one a quick riff from a different song, so I could replay them all at the end of the day.
I e-mailed my friend Ed and told him about the burgeoning bird population. “Hamlet said, ‘there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’” he wrote back. “I might add, as well as the fall of a wood duck. And a finch. And a group of jays. And many robins. And now a cedar waxwing. Is there anyone I’ve missed?”
“Who the heck knows?” I wrote back. “Sometimes I lose track.”
It was over two weeks since the blue jays had arrived. They were fuzzily feathered and bouncing out of their nest, so I moved them into a roomy reptarium. The reptarium was filled with tree branches for perching and leaves, pinecones, and acorns for play. One day another rehabber delivered a single jay, only slightly older than ours; he quickly fit into the Harry Potter clan and was christened Albus Dumbledore II, in honor of the smallest nestling who had survived only a few days.
By the third week feeding them was an adventure. They were filled with energy and dying to fly but weren’t yet eating on their own, so I couldn’t put them in the flight cage. Whenever I’d unzip the top of the reptarium in order to feed them, they’d burst upward like large kernels of blue popcorn and bolt off through the house, with the kids and me galloping behind in hopeless pursuit. This led to breathless exchanges:
JOHN [ENTERING THE HOUSE]: Hello everybod—
ME: Close the door! There’s been another jailbreak!
JOHN: Not really! How unusual!
ME: Quick—grab Hagrid!
BOTH KIDS [STOPPING DEAD]: But that’s not Hagrid, it’s the Professor.
JOHN: Here, I’ll get Harry—
SKYE: That’s not Harry, it’s Ron.
ME: I’ve got Norbert!
MAC: That’s not Norbert, it’s Albus Dumbledore the Second.
Sometimes, after we herded them back into the reptarium, we carried it into my bedroom and placed it on the floor next to the screened door. I put a shallow dish of water on the cage floor and the kids took turns spraying the jays through the mesh with a water-only plant mister, encouraging them to preen and readying them for their eventual encounters with rain. At first they cowered together, frightened by the unfamiliar sensations, but soon they were spreading their wings to catch the drops, fanning their tail feathers, and crowding into the water dish. Later they took up positions on various perches, drowsing in the sunshine that poured through the screen door and listening to the sounds of the outside world.
“You’ll be there soon,” promised Mac.
Chapter 14
INCLUSION
Breathe in. Feed the nestlings.
Breathe out. Feed the nestlings.
Breathe in. Feed the nestlings.
Breathe out. Feed the nestlings.
Oh, is there more to life?
It was pouring rain, the kids were in day camp, and I was leaving to see Dr. Wendy. Strapped to the backseat was the closeable wicker picnic basket; inside, tucked into various nests, were the current nestlings—two house wrens, a tufted titmouse, and a chipping sparrow. Riding in carriers in the back of the Jeep were a herring gull and a Canada goose.
“A goose!” I’d said to the man who called. “Can’t you find any injured flamingos? I only take healthy adult songbirds, but I’d make an exception for a flamingo.”
“What?” he said.
John had not been as easily sidetracked. Appearing just as I was about to back out of the garage, he cast a suspicious look into the car.
“What have you got in there?” he asked.
“Just the nestlings!” I said.
“I don’t mean in the basket—I mean in those carriers. Those carriers that seem to be too large for nestlings, unless they’re nestling pterodactyls.”
“I promise you,” I said solemnly. “I will never accept a pterodactyl from a member of the public.”
John opened the back door and peered behind the towels covering the carriers. “You’re on a slippery slope, aren’t you?” he said.
“I’m not keeping the goose,” I explained. “I’m taking them both down to Wendy, and she’s going to give the goose to another rehabber. But I have to go, because she’s waiting for me. Bye!”
I drove slowly, peering through the rain and following a line of traffic. When I was halfway there, the driver two cars ahead of me hit a large woodchuck. He tapped his brakes briefly, then kept going. The driver directly ahead of me made a wide circle around the woodchuck, who stood, fell over, rose drunkenly, and fell again. I yanked the steering wheel to the right and pulled off the road, watching incredulously as car after car avoided the staggering creature and continued on its way, barely slowing down.
Half of my brain ordered me to pull back onto the road and follow their example. The other half shouted, “Fer Chrissakes, hurry up before some idiot kills him!”
Cursing, I jumped out of the car, opened the back, and grabbed the blanket covering the gull’s crate, also snatching two small cardboard trays that happened to be propped up between the crates. I marched into the middle of the road and threw the blanket over the woodchuck, suddenly realizing that I knew very little about them. I thought furiously, trying to remember the woodchuck questions from my New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Exam.
Which of the following animals normally hibernates during the winter?
a) opossum
b) red squirrel
c) woodchuck
d) raccoon
My grandfather once told me that all knowledge has value, although knowing that woodchucks hibernate in the winter did not seem especially valuable to me as I was standing in the middle of the road. Assuming that if I suddenly grabbed a wild woodchuck he would bite me whether or not he had recently been clobbered by a large car, I swaddled him in the blanket, put one cardboard tray under him and one over him, picked him up like an overstuffed sandwich, and carried him back to the Jeep. Cramming the whole package between the two crates, I slammed the back door shut, going on faith that during the next five minutes the woodchuck wouldn’t somehow wiggle out of the blanket and start running laps around the car.
During the short drive to the veterinarian’s office I considered my situation. As John had noticed, I wasn’t doing a very good job at drawing the line. But there was a terrible shortage of bird rehabbers in my area, and I had never been good at saying no to an animal in distress. It’s just a facet of my personality, I decided. Some people are unable to pass a chocolate truffle lying on a table without grabbing it and stuffing it into their mouth, and I am unable to pass a woodchuck convulsing on the road without grabbing it and stuffing it into the back of my car. At that particular moment I reached the office, thus concluding my haphazard psychological self-assessment.
I parked the car, unstrapped the basket, and sprinted across the parking lot, trying to avoid jostling the baby birds as I ran. Reaching the door, I flung myself inside, breathless, disheveled, and dripping wet. Janet looked up from her desk, pursing her lips in a desperate attempt not to laugh.
“Lovely day for a picnic,” she said.
Wendy, ever positive, walked into the waiting room and regarded me with a look of pleasant surprise, as if I had just strolled in wearing tennis whites and holding a mint julep.
“It’s not enough that I have a goose and a gull and all these babies,” I told her. “Now I have a woodchuck.”
“Room number one,” said Wendy, without missing a beat. “Need help bringing him in?”
A minute later I hurried back in through the front door, balancing the woodchuck sandwich between two soggy cardboard trays.
“Hey!” caroled Janet as I disappeared into the examination room. “You want some mayo on that groundhog?”
Wendy closed the door and pulled at the blanket, searching for the beast within. An opening appeared and the woodchuck burst into view, blood dripping from his nose, chattering in what I would term an aggressive way even though at the time I had no basis for comparison. Wendy calmly grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, felt around for broken bones, shone a penlight into his eyes, and finally announced that he looked fine but could probably use a shot of cortisone. Depositing the woodchuck gently on the floor in the corner, she tossed the blanket back over him and left the room.
I opened the picnic basket and fed the nestlings, keeping a wary eye on the blanket in the corner of the room. I’d fed the last one and was closing the lid when the blanket started moving ominously. Should I act casual, I wondered, or run back into the waiting room and hide behind Janet? Get ahold of yourself, I told myself sternly. Wildlife is wildlife; it’s just this one is huge, hairy, and has giant rodent fangs instead of a beak.
Wendy returned with a hypodermic and a large cardboard box. As soon as she bent down and gave the injection, the woodchuck shot out from under the blanket and ran straight toward me. Leaping into the air, I did a lively Mexican hat dance, silently vowing that someday I would rewrite the New York State Wildlife Rehabilitation Exam with more pertinent questions:
A woodchuck has been hit by a car, dragged into a veterinarian’s office, held by the scruff of the neck, given a shot, and is currently racing around the office floor sounding like an enraged lawn mower. Should the rescuer fear that the woodchuck will bite her foot?
a) yes
b) no
c) not if the rescuer has explained to the woodchuck that she is a bird rehabilitator and doesn’t do mammals.
Wendy intercepted the woodchuck, deposited him into the large cardboard box, and covered the box with my blanket. “There we go!” she said cheerfully. “Now—who’s next?”
The goose and the gull both had broken wings. The rehabber Wendy had contacted was a kind woman named Marylyn Eichenholtz, a mammal rehabber who had agreed to provide temporary care for the goose until she could pass her along to a waterbird rehabber up north. That left me with the herring gull, normally a big strapping creature with wide yellow eyes and a bad attitude. This one was thin and weak, having been grounded in a parking lot for two days before someone rescued him. This did not prevent him from methodically biting my hand at every opportunity; it just meant that, at this point, his bite didn’t hurt.
“That’ll change,” promised Wendy. “Believe me, you’ll know when he’s starting to feel better.”
After both birds had been treated and their wings wrapped, Wendy lifted the blanket and regarded the woodchuck.
“I would bring him back where you found him and let him go,” she said. “Unless you’re really dying to take him home.”
“No,” I said. “Believe it or not, I’m drawing the line.”
I made my way through the waiting room, carrying the gull’s crate and the basket of nestlings, while Wendy followed behind me with the woodchuck. “Suzie!” cried Robin Sista, the other receptionist. “Janet tells me you’re doing mammals! Can you take a coyote?”
I drove back to where I had found the woodchuck, pulled off the road, and squinted through the downpour at a heavily wooded steep slope. This couldn’t have happened next to a nice level field on a sunny day, I thought grumpily. I opened the back of the Jeep, picked up the woodchuck’s box, trotted across the road, and began staggering up the slope, trying to maintain enough momentum to keep me moving upward but not so much that I would lose my balance and somersault, box and all, down onto the road—where, no doubt, cars would make a wide circle around me and continue on their way. I finally slowed to a stop and, gasping, set the box down in the mud. Through the drone of the rain I could hear the sound of angry chattering.
