So. The thing about the bird and the penis.
The little chicken had just died. I was looking at the growing cemetery in the back garden and doing the math - 3 animals in less than 2 years. At this rate, I am going to have the Paris catacombs in my back yard by the time I retire.
A few days later, I was filling the kettle for my morning tea when the birds in the back yard started going ballistic. It was the very particular screech and hysteria of a fallen nestling, so I ran out in my jammies to make sure the cats or chickens weren't murdering anyone and found a baby bulbul in the leaves. Its parents threw themselves down on the ground and dragged their wings around like dying things to lure me away, so I gave them a chance to reclaim the little thing, but it was shivering and hungry and injured, and they were really bad at baby rescue. Birds need to evolve a piggyback system or something.
So I found myself cuddling the little thing up to a warm potato, feeding it some baby bird formula, and driving it clear across the island to ditch with my mother, the designated bulbul depository. I'm the screeching chicken witch, and she's the adorable songbird witch. This is okay, because I don't have to feed chickens with a toothpick, I can just throw garbage out the back door. I've got the easier job, if she's got the cuter one.
I was feeling pretty good with the karmic balance of this rescue, after losing the poxy chick, when the phone dinged. My cousin's beloved old family rabbit had died, and they wanted to know if they could bury it in our yard.
It's fine. It's fiiiiiiine.
The grave digging was kind of harrowing, because we tried to keep it in the same plot as the cats, and every shovelful carried the threat of accidental exhumation. But in the end we got the little bun-bun to rest without extra trauma to the young cousins.
The baby bird, meanwhile, was thriving. In just two days it was healed up and thinking of flying, so my mother brought it back to my house to try to reunite with its parents. Birds will accept their babies for about 4 days, and will even recognize them later as adults, if they find their way home, so it was worth a go.
It did not work, though, and I ended up in a tree watching my neighbor pee into his bushes. Not on purpose. He didn't seem bothered, and just finished his business and went inside, talking on the phone. Men are mysterious.
I felt really acrobatic, hauling myself up into a lychee tree and then managing not to crash through the roof into the garage. After 35, I thought, you're practically 40, and 40 is only a few decades away from retirement, if you think about it. So really, this is an amazing feat of athleticism for someone very nearly almost an octogenarian. I took an ibuprofen.
We were both relieved to have the little bird back in hand, safe and warm, as night fell and the rain came down. It is continuing to do really well over at her house.
And then on Easter my mother found a dove with a broken wing in the Costco parking lot, because OF COURSE SHE DID. Birds fall out of the sky when they see us coming. We need to carry parasols when we run to the car.
GET THE MILK IN THE TRUNK AND LOCK THE DOORS KIDS
Luckily, doves fall in the adorable-songbird category, so all I had to do was look in at it while drinking wine after dinner and report that it had fallen over and gotten its leg stuck in its splint. She fiddled it back into place.
These BIRDS, people.
