Yesterday I took Hammy out for his morning constitution and he was immediately drawn to something in the grass. He was sniffing and pawing and kind of jumping around, so I went over to investigate. Hammy had discovered a baby bird. The bird was drenched and squawking sadly. We’d had a stormy night and it looked like the bird had been blown out of the nest.
I pulled Hammy away before he could eat the poor thing and then did what any normal person would do: I Googled “What do I do with a baby bird?” No, I didn’t. I asked my Facebook friends what to do. I had a lot of advice, most of which was good.
About an hour later I went out to check on the bird and discovered a second one crying on the ground too. A few adult birds circled overhead and I was like, “Come get your kids off my lawn!” But they didn’t listen to me. The first bird wasn’t doing so well. All of its energy was gone, it was lying on its side, and its breathing was shallow. “Aw shit,” I said. “I don’t want a dead bird in my yard. That’s too sad.”
“I’ll call Aunt Ida!” Adolpha said.
My sister-in-law has many skills and one of them is nursing wild animals back to health—including birds. She had real-world experience and we needed her. Aunt Ida wasn’t available, but one of her kids was and it seems like the apple didn’t fall from the tree with that one because they knew what to do.
Within 20 minutes, Adolpha and her cousin had the two birds safely ensconced in a box and they were headed for some bird sanctuary slash rescue thing Ida knew about. Adolpha called me from the car, “They pooped on me!”
“Nervous shits. It’s a thing,” I said. “You just scooped them up from the only world they knew and plopped them into an Xbox box full of paper towels. You’d shit yourself too.”
“The one is really hurt,” she said. “I think it’s wing is broken. When it moves it cries.”
“Yes, that’s why you’re taking it to the rescue people. We don’t know what to do with an injured baby bird. They do.”
When Adolpha returned home a few hours later, she had a wild tale for us. There was more poop. Both birds survived the trip, but the really injured bird tried to bite her. The rescue people asked for a credit card for a donation, but neither kid had a credit card. And then Adolpha said, “It’s weird there. You can adopt a bald eagle.”
I was in the middle of doing something and only listening with half my brain, but that sentence got my full attention. “You can’t adopt a bald eagle,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to own one.”
“No! They have signs all over. And it’s not just eagles. There are turkey vultures and hawks you can adopt too.”
“Who the hell is going to adopt a turkey vulture?” I asked. “What do you even do with it?”
Adolpha shrugged. “I don’t know. But they have owls. Can we adopt an owl?”
“What? We just adopted a second dog—which wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had, by the way—and now you want to try raising an owl? Where would it live? And if you think those baby birds pooped a lot, you know owls shit out whole bones, right?”
“Actually, they puke them,” Gomer said.
“Right,” I said. “My bad. Still, we have no idea how to raise an owl or a hawk. And I’m positive it’s illegal to have an eagle.”
“‘Merica,” Gomer said.
This is when I did turn to Google instead of my Facebook friends:
Can you fix a baby bird’s broken wing? It requires surgery and a metal pin in the wing. We made the right choice taking it to the pros.
Would a dog eat a baby bird it finds on the ground? Most likely. Yikes. My babies are cold-blooded killers.
Do owls poop bones? No. They regurgitate them—one point for Gomer.
Is it illegal to own an eagle? Yes. In fact, it’s illegal to own any PART of an eagle, including a feather. There’s no way this place was putting eagles up for adoption.
Can you adopt an American Eagle from a sanctuary? NO. Reading is fundamental.
“Adolpha it says here on their website that you can adopt an eagle or a hawk or an owl,” I said.
“See? I told you!” Adolpha crowed. (You can adopt crows too, btw.)
“Hang on, did you see where the word adopt was in quotes?” I asked.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s in quotes because you can’t really adopt it.”
“No, there were signs. And adoption fees,” she insisted.
“Okay, but it’s like adopting a road. The road isn’t yours, but you give money to maintain it.”
“Didn’t you ‘adopt’ a shark recently?” Gomer asked.
“Yes! Like that. You can have the owl the same way you have the shark. There’s no way they’re letting anyone walk out there with actual birds. They worked too hard to rehabilitate them just to have some idiot kill them within 24 hours because they’re a moron.”
“So they just want my money?” she asked.
I showed her the website. “You can adopt Frank for fifty bucks or whatever.”
“But what do I get?” she asked.
“The satisfaction of knowing you helped a bird today,” I said.
She frowned. “Yeah, I already helped two birds today. I think I’m good.”
She gets her brains from me and her empathy from her dad.
Turkey vultures are actually cool as hell and a keystone species, but I'll leave them to the sanctuaries, which don't just exist to fix and release, but care for the birds that some asshole human decided to own, got them imprinted on humans, and then dumped them. They CAN'T survive in the wild anymore, after human interference. I met one, at a rescue, with that issue, and he was SO COOL (his name was Sashimi! ❤️). But also, they were caring for him and presenting him as an ambassador for education, because he literally can't survive on his own anymore and they need funds for their non-profit so they can continue to aide and educate.
They had a Golden Eagle, by the way, as an ambassador, too, because she had been hit by a car and so was blind in one eye. She has a home forever, with the right people, but I wouldn't want to own her. Her claws can literally break bones; the rescue guy holding her, even with a glove, was noticably trying to hide his cringes from her weight and strength. I donated all my cash and my husband's cash to their cause, very impressed and supportive of them, but there's a reason you can't legally buy one, they're not nor should be domesticated!
One of the rehabbers in NH is a licensed falconer and specializes in rehabbing raptors. You can go and watch her release the birds when they're rehabbed. Coolest thing ever.