when i was a wee kid, we lived out in the country on "Buddy Lane". my dad's sister and her family lived on Buddy Lane also, and we spent nearly every day together, making the short walk from our house to theirs and vice versa.
on these walks we found everything from turtles to lizards to stray dogs, that i immediately claimed as my own. aside from the dogs, the animals were all very easy to care for. just take the turtle/frog/lizard and place it in a shoebox, with holes punched in the lid. add grass, a stick, some dirt (to recreate their environment!) and a few crumbs of bread, and Viola! Instant animal home. :)
(please don't ask how long any of these animals lived. everybody knows the average life span of a frog is less than 2 days, right?)
anyways, i have been re-living some of my experiences with my kids this month, as an assortment of animals have come across our path.
one night a couple of weeks ago, Dustin was walking through the garage and found the tiniest baby bird on top of our lawn mower. the door to the garage was up, and we can only imagine that the bird fell or was kicked out of the nest close to our garage. (there are several around our house)
it was about 1am, and we couldn't find the nest, so he brought the bird inside and we tried to do whatever we could to protect him from the harsh rainy conditions of the night.
step 1: find a shoe box.
seriously. i put that baby bird in a shoe box, just until we could find his mommy in the morning. i was tempted to throw a stick in there for good measure, but decided against it.
i tried to talk dustin into chewing up an earthworm and spitting it into the bird's tiny mouth, but he didn't go for that idea. we did try our best to find something the baby bird would eat, but nothing seemed to entice him.
the next morning, the kids woke up and saw this baby bird and went bananas over his tiny cuteness. as they looked at the baby bird (LOOK BUT DO NOT TOUCH!) i hopped on the computer to see how we should go about getting baby bird back home.
STEP 1: DO NOT TOUCH A BABY BIRD EVER.
STEP 2: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FEED A BABY BIRD.
Apparently a baby bird needs to eat every 15-20 MINUTES. seriously. i felt so bad that we were about to unknowingly kill this little guy in our ignorant attempt to save him.
i jumped up and grabbed the shoebox and raced outside to find the nest. the website insisted that if i placed him on the ground or on a branch or bush near the nest, the mother would be able to find him and care for him.
and then the wailing started. apparently Julian thought this was his new pet. he cried and raged and stomped and insisted, "I DON'T EVEN LIKE CHARLIE!!! I WANT "BABY BIRDIE BLUE"!!! (apparently baby bird was named in the ten minutes that Julian knew him).
Julian throws a lot of fits, but he was seriously heartbroken. he usually gets over things pretty quickly, but he ran downstairs and cried to Dustin for nearly 30 minutes and spent the rest of the morning in a sour mood. he wasn't angry as much as he was disappointed at the loss of his beloved "pet".
he was finally brightened up at the idea that this Baby Birdie Blue would be raised by his parents, but would stay close as our "yard" pet. later that afternoon, a bird flew up to our living room window, and just poked his head around peeping inside. I pointed the bird out to Julian and he started grinning.
he said, "That's Baby Birdie Blue's mama. i think she's tellin us 'thank you'."
i'm pretty sure he was right.
stay tuned for a second animal we found this week, that we did NOT consider keeping as a pet....hiss hiss