Friday, July 18, 2008

Baby Bird Drama

The other day we caught a baby bird that was in our yard. My siblings took great care of it, feeding it worms, putting it to sleep, and making a nice cage for it. We named him/her Sparrow-wing. Sparrow-wing survived the night and the next morning Cecilia and John Paul and Max woke up early to go out to it. They fed, stroked, held, and loved the bird. Rose saw them handling it, and so when everyone was inside she decided to give it a bath. Unfortunately she drowned it. My siblings were horrified. Rose didn't understand what she had done and kept saying, "John Paul can fix it".
John Paul dug a grave and had a sign made. He even built a coffin out of cardboard. Max and John Paul put flowers there and any feathers they find. It was a sad morning.

9 comments:

The Schultz Family said...

I was so sad when your mom told me this story! I'm sure Rose didn't mean to, but I know how awful the rest of you must have felt. So sad!

Mary Kate said...

yeah, I wasn't too sad because they made me feed it........

papa said...

This is a sad story MK but baby birds will rarely survive even if Rose didn't give it a bath. A lot of these little birds get or fall out of their nests prematurely. If, by some miracle, they find their way back to the nest they might survive. It's natural for us to want to help them though. The sad thing is, they still need their Mommy and when a human touches them, the Mommy won't accept it back. Sometimes, it's better to let them try to make their way back home.I know that's hard to do though becasue we want to help them so much. I guess we need to pray that God takes care of them.Tell Max, John Paul, Ceclia dn Rose that I am sorry they lost their little bird.

papa said...

I am also sorry for the words I mispelled.

Papa

Mary Kate said...

You're right but I guess I didn't make it clear that is wasn't a little baby bird. It was just about old enough to fly. And my mom said that it is only little baby birds that the mom won't take back. She will except a baby bird back if it is older. And don't worry about misspelled words!

papa said...

Your Mom is a very smart lady!. Thaks for the information.

teresa anthony said...

A few extra thoughts on our "baby bird drama".

- The kids are frequently finding baby birds (at least two or three a spring/summer season), and 99% of the time I make them leave it alone because we can tell the mom is near by VERY anxious. This time, as Mary Kate said, it was a pretty big baby, with feather's starting to molt, and there was definitely no mama or papa bird around. It did however still open its mouth to be feed, and as Mary Kate said, her sibling made her drop in the worms that they had dug up.

While it was in almost all respects rather sad and horrible that Rose "gave it a bath", there was something mildly funny about the situation. As John Paul, Max and Cecilia cried, I told them about a few other three year old children I remembered. There was Cecilia, who used to pull our gold fish out of the tank and pet it. It would be gasping for breath as she serenly stroked it's scales. And then Mary Kate at three had found a worm and wanted to keep it as a pet. We decided NOT to tell Daddy (as he has a particular dislike of worms), but at dinner that night, Mary Kate said something about having brought it inside the house. As Daddy looked thoroughly disgusted, I gasped "where is it?" She informed us that she too, had thought it might like a bath and had accidentally dropped it down the bathroom sink.

Three year olds - utterly adorable and completely unpredictable!

papa said...

Oh my goodness Teresa those were really funny episodes with Cecelia and Mary Kate. I can just picture Scott's look concerning the worm. I was trying to remember if it was hot dogs he wouldn't eat because they contained erthrogates (SP) and someone told him they were earth worms.

Cecelia petting the goldfish had to be a precious site, though not so precious to the fish!

our little brown life said...

I am sooooo loving your new blog! What a fun way to get a little slice of your life as I'm going about mine. And I'll share the stories and pics with my kiddos so they'll share in the fun too.
I'm sorry to hear about the bird guys.
Teresa- Go Charlotte Mason style schooling!
Love,
Carolyn