Category: Birds

Fly High, Fly Free

Yesterday, Inigo the Nanner King and I said our goodbye.

We arrived at the veterinarian’s at 11:40. While we were in the visiting room, at 11:50, I remembered Steph, a customer service rep at Birdhism, said she would post Inigo as Chubby Bird of the Day at 11:45. I opened Facebook and it was the first post in my feed.

“There you are, Inigo! There you are, for the whole world to see! There you are!”

He looked at the phone and made kisses! He was so happy!

Shortly after that, once he got used to his surroundings, he let me know he was ready, though he did get tangled in my hair when I tried to pass him to the tech for sedation. He let out a squeak when she gave him the injection.

“That is the last pain you will ever feel, my baby bird.”

She handed him back to me, and I held him on me, over my heart, on the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt I was wearing the day I met him. It was his comfort shirt. She left, and I hummed his favorite song to him as he fell asleep, “Silent Night.”

We stayed like that for 10 minutes. I told him so very many times how special he was, how much I loved him, how much everybody loved him.

Then I pushed the button for the veterinarian and the tech to come in, and I held him and sang to him again after they put the heart needle in.

I looked up at the ceiling, trying not to fall apart and weep all over him, and when I looked back down at him, his eyes were open. He was looking up at me.

“I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. You’re not alone. I’m here. It’s okay to go. I love you. I’m here. It’s okay.”

He closed his eyes, took a little breath, so faint it was barely two tiny clicks, and was gone. He slipped away gently, knowing only peace.

When I called the tech back in, I told her he opened his eyes before he died. She said sometimes birds do that to say goodbye.

Inigo, my beautiful little Nanner King, I will miss you every day for the rest of my life. You honored me in an incomparable way when you climbed over your cagemate, clung to the door, and then flew over, landed on me, and would not come off. You chose me that long-ago April afternoon, and I hope you know how much joy and love you brought into my life. Then you honored me again when you opened your eyes in your final moments here, so I was the last thing you saw.

Mommy loves you, Inigo, now and always.

Celebrating (the end of) 2022.

Today Holidailies asks “What do you actually celebrate during the holidays, if anything?”

I’m an atheist, so nothing religious. I celebrate friendship, the achievements of the year, the wonder of winter, and the festive spirit around me. I haven’t put up a tree in 9 years, but when I did, it was a Memory Tree, not a Christmas tree: The ornaments were given to me by my parents or friends, or I bought them on my travels, while out with friends, or as a collector’s item.

This year I’m also celebrating the forthcoming end of 2022, as this was not a particularly fabulous year. It was great up until about April, and then I got hammered with a bunch of health issues, starting with a root canal retreatment after a dentist missed an entire canal a few years ago. But hey, I still haven’t gotten You-Know-What-19, knock on wood and let’s not tempt fate.

The biggest thing is that I’m officially a heart patient, after a scan revealed a 40-60% blockage in a coronary artery. So now I have a cardiologist. He put me on rosuvastatin (Crestor) and wow, my LDL and triglycerides fell into the basement and my HDL is at pre-menopausal levels. The only real side effect I’ve gotten is that if I don’t stay hydrated my spit gets kind of bubbly and frothy, you’re welcome for the image. It also makes me a bit tired, but it’s actually a good thing because when my head hits the pillow, I’m out. Me, a lifelong insomniac. I mean, while the lights are on I’m awake, but once I flip the switch, I get sleepy very quickly. Weird but true.

When I spoke to my cardiologist, I said, “So, what, about 75?” Meaning my lifespan. Hey, next year, when I hit 57, I will have outlived everyone on my father’s side of the family except my father. People on his side all had lousy tickers and died in their early to mid 50s, which is why my internist sent me to a cardiologist in the first place.

Anyway, the cardiologist said, “NINETY-five.”

“I’ll compromise and say 85.”

“No, NINETY-five.”

“Doc, I don’t want to be 95 years old in the United States, for all kinds of reasons.”

And it’s true. I don’t. For one thing, I’m a Gen-Xer. I don’t suffer from the delusion that I’ll ever be able to fully retire. For another, with the American politics, health care system, and treatment of senior seniors being what they are, no. And there is some Alzheimer’s in my family and I want my body to go before my mind.

But let’s not dwell on all of that. Point is, I’m SUPER glad that 2022 is drawing down because I’ve had better years.

And it started so WELL, too, with a fun New Year’s Eve party, some great city-hikes, a day-trip to Richmond, and plans to go to Poland to see my favorite band, Poets of the Fall (which got canceled for a few reasons).

Moving on, as this is a HAPPY occasion…

I did enjoy one thing all year, though: My apartment. After a major misfire with my last place, I’m happy to report that the place I moved into a year ago is PERFECT for me. It’s big, I love the layout, I have two full bathrooms (one of which is pretty much Inigo’s, heh), a separate office, and a spare room that I use as a home gym. I’m near everything—restaurants, nightlife, groceries, drugstore, some retail, most of my health care team, parks, trails, the county library, and a Metro station–but my place isn’t on a main drag. I told the landlord I’m not leaving unless I relocate, retire, expatriate, or expire. It’s perfect for aging in place.

Bonus: There is a great tree right in front of my living room window and all sorts of birds come by. Blue Jays, Sparrows, Chickadees, Northern Mockingbirds, Mourning Doves, American Robins, American Crows, and Fish Crows are the main visitors, but this fall a White-Breasted Nuthatch stopped by, and a Downy Woodpecker spent a few days woodpecking.

Squirrels of assorted hues, including black, also scamper around, and I like to think one of the black ones is the son or daughter of Amica, the black squirrel who used to sit in the tree and watch my TV through the window when I put cartoons on for Inigo. Unfortunately, she died. I found her curled around a fencepost last winter, not long after she passed as her tummy was still warm. Her back legs and hips were broken, so she probably got clipped by a car. I cried for a week and miss her still.

Here she is, as seen through the window, welcoming me when I took measurements of the apartment before I moved in. Whenever I put cartoons on, she would sit in the tree just like that and watch them.

 

I often put peanuts on the balcony railing. In the spring the Crows come for them, but lately the Blue Jays seem to have claimed the territory. I think they know my face and see me from afar because when I went out there today to put the peanuts out, I could have sworn there were no birds in any of the trees nearby, and suddenly a Blue Jay landed in the tree, looked at me, and let out a low series of whistles and soft chirps that sounded a little bit like R2-D2 gargling. Then it let out a few of the more customary and ear-splitting Blue Jay calls and boom, three more flew in. So I said, “Peanuts here! Get yer peanuts here!” and went inside to watch them from the living room. I’ll try to get some photos of them, but they are still a little skittish.

This entry is getting long, so I’ll end it here.

Emmie

One of my little rules is that I don’t work on Friday nights. Not job work, not house work, not errands. But I have a pretty busy weekend planned, and I knew I wouldn’t get up early tomorrow to do grocery shopping, so I set out to do so tonight. I really didn’t want to go, and I put it off, knowing, and dreading, that I was going to have to walk through the nightlife part of town. There would be a lot of people out, it would be noisy, and leftovers from happy hour would be stumbling around like revenants looking for a second life. I mumbled. I grumbled. I took the trash out. Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.

I gathered my things and got to the elevator before I realized I didn’t have any tissues with me. I carry them not so much for myself, although there’s that, but also because sometimes I find dead birds. I cannot bear to leave them on the sidewalk or street, where people will step around them with a look of disgust and maybe kick them aside, kids will poke them with sticks, and dogs will chew them up, so I pick them up with a tissue and lay them to rest under trees or shrubs. My mood darkening yet further, I went back to my apartment and stuffed a few tissues in my bag.

About ten minutes into my walk I hit the strip. Sure enough, there were what seemed like a million people out, and good on ’em. They were seeing friends, having dinner, window-shopping, getting ice cream…and stepping around a little round bird. She was tiny, barely the size of a golf ball, a fledgling. And she was trying over and over to fly, only to crash into storefront windows, parked cars, trash bins, and a tree. People were pausing, watching, saying “awwww,” moving along.

Normally, when you find a fledgling—a fully feathered, or nearly fully feathered, baby bird that is learning to fly—it is best to leave it where it is. Its parents are nearby and will continue to take care of their little one even if it’s grounded. I looked for the nest and couldn’t see one. I listened, and I didn’t see or hear any parents. Sometimes parent birds get frantic in situations like that.

Flutter, crash, flutter, crash.

The little one was exhausting herself. More people came. Some had dogs, and I got between them and the bird. She landed on a tree trunk and tried to climb, only to flutter to the ground.

I took out my phone and looked for local wildlife rehabilitators. I left a message with one and the recording said they would call back in 30 minutes.

Fifteen minutes went by.

Flutter, crash, flutter, crash.

Some guys came toward us with their dog. I asked them to stay back. When they saw her they said “sure” and “absolutely,” and asked me if she would be all right. I said I was trying to get her help. As they walked away one looked over his shoulder and said, “Thank you for doing that.”

I began to get out my phone to look for another wildlife rehabilitator. As I was digging through my purse, I looked down at the little one, told her I wouldn’t hurt her, and asked her if she was okay.

She looked at me, and then she flew up toward me, right at me, so help me, right toward my heart. I held out my hand and she landed in it. Just landed in it all by herself. She was cool to the touch—not a great sign—and she hunkered down into my palm to warm up, so I held her. Here she is:

I sat on a bench and another fifteen minutes went by. Baby birds need to eat every half hour, and I was getting worried. She seemed content nestled in my hand, and she gave me quite a fright when she closed her eyes and took a little nap because I thought for a moment that she had died.

So there I was, empty grocery bags strewn out beside me, my glasses askew on my head, trying to find a wildlife rehabilitator on my phone with one hand, holding a precious fledgling in the other, trying not to cry and failing. A mother and her daughter came out of the ice cream shop, asked me how the little one was doing—which was just enough interaction to force me to compose myself—and left. The only two wildlife rehabilitators I could find worked with mammals, so I called the first one on the list, who worked with opossums.

We spoke for about five minutes, and she said that the tragedy in these situations is that with so many people around, even if the parents were around, they wouldn’t have flown down to their baby. We both knew this little one would not have stood a chance, especially as there would soon be drunken revelers filling the sidewalks. Someone would have stepped on her, either accidentally or deliberately, so once she perked up and started getting squirmy in my hand, I put her in one of my reusable shopping bags, called an Uber, and took her to the lady’s house.

Once she saw the little one, she knew it was the right thing that I removed her from the area. She said this wee one was sufficiently developed that she would probably eat—any younger and they often won’t eat from anyone but the parents—and she would take care of her and eventually release her in a park behind her house.

Funny part is, after we got to talking for a few minutes, it turned out that this woman grew up in Manhattan and her mother’s best friend is from my hometown on Long Island, so she knew my hometown well. It is indeed a small world, and we’re all connected somehow.

I called another Uber and texted a few friends on the way home. It’s a running joke that I’m the one who talks to birds, not unlike how Linus Van Pelt in Peanuts used to pat Woodstock and other birds on the head. And I just had to share the story.

The ride home made me a little carsick, and by the time I got up to my apartment the evening had begun to catch up to me. I washed up and took care of my own bird, making sure to apologize for coming home without his nanners. After a few more texts, one of my friends said “your heart must be so full right now,” and it’s a good thing I had those tissues nearby.

Indeed my heart is full in a way it hasn’t been for a very long time. That this sweet, fragile little bird trusted me enough to fly to me for help is something I will cherish for the rest of my life. Holding her, watching her settle in, knowing that she knew I wouldn’t hurt her and that I would do my best to help her, sensing the gratitude coming from her even in her exhaustion—if I could share that feeling with the entire world, I would.

Little one, I don’t know what your parents named you, but to me you seemed like an Emmie, so I hope it’s okay that I think of you with that name. I hope you have a good night’s sleep, and that you will grow to have a happy, birdie life. Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to help you, and I hope that somehow your parents understand that you came to no harm in my hands and are now safe. Wherever you may fly, you will always be loved.