Birds

We don't have pets.  Since we got married Zach has been begging for a dog, but we have had two little boys instead.  I am not entirely opposed to the idea of pets, but I really would like to avoid it as long as possible.  One reason for this is that all my traumatic childhood memories involve pets.

 My puppy was poisoned and I found him dead in the bushes.

Our horse was sold to a glue factory (I recently found out that this was a LIE and that my Uncle was just being mean and told me that).

I walked into the garage one day to see a white oak snake eating a nest of baby birds.

I found a dying baby bird that was being eaten by ants.

We found a baby squirrel outside and tried to nurse it back to health.  It choked on milk in the middle of the night and died.

My favorite dog in the whole world had to get sent to the shelter and we later found out he had been put down.

See where I'm going with this?

So we don't have pets.

When we discovered that a bird had built a nest in one of our trees outside, we were skeptical but excited.  It was a pretty flimsy tree, but it was pretty neat to see the nest that close.  First there was just a nest.  Then there were two little eggs.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we watched the mama bird sit on the nest all day and night. 

 

Finally the eggs hatched. 

I watched over these baby birds more than I watched my own children a lot. 

Then, disaster struck in the form of Tropical Storm Andrea. It rained and rained and rained.  The mama bird didn't leave the nest for two days.  The daddy bird came and brought them all food.  It rained so hard that the nest began to take on water and tip over.  Zach jimmy-rigged an umbrella in between the branches of the tree to offer some relief from the rain.  It worked for a while.  Eventually the rain and wind knocked the umbrella over which made the branch lean even more.  I prepared myself for all the birds to fall out of the nest and die.    

One of the times I looked out the window, I noticed that the mama was gone so I went outside to investigate.  One of the baby birds had fallen out of the nest and was lying on the ground.  I was always taught never to get too close or touch birds because the mama would smell humans and abandon the nest.  So I left him to die :(

I cried.

And I called Zach at work and cried some more.

When Zach got home, the bird was still chirping frantically on the ground.  He wrapped his arm in a grocery bag and put the bird back in the nest.  He removed the umbrella and straightened the nest back like it was. 

The mama bird didn't come back for a long time.  We knew the babies wouldn't make it very long without their mama. 

 Then.... the mama came back! Seriously, I was ridiculously excited about this.  

She sat on those babies for about another week. 

Then they left the nest. 

The cutest part of the entire ordeal was Preston.  He would check on the birds with me and we watched them learn to fly.  He kept saying "fly, birdie, fly!"

See why we don't have pets? I get way too emotionally invested!