Chapter 5
THE ONE EXCEPTION
After four days in the flight cage, the house finch was eating well and seemed comfortable, but had made no attempt to fly. I was wary of chasing him, envisioning my very first songbird launching himself off the branch, crashing to the ground, and breaking his formerly dislocated wing. With this in mind I called and made an appointment with Dr. Alan Peterson, a good friend who had promised to donate his veterinary services should I ever need his help.
“A house finch?” asked the receptionist. “You mean a wild bird? I don’t think Dr. Peterson sees wild birds. Hold on, let me check.”
After a minute she returned. “When would you like to come in?” she asked.
There is no one more important to a rehabilitator’s professional life than a skilled veterinarian, and those willing to help injured wildlife are few and far between. Treating wildlife requires an added layer of knowledge, as treatments that may work for domestic animals don’t necessarily work for wild ones. Veterinary medicine, often cited as being far more difficult than human medicine because the patient can’t say where it hurts, becomes even harder when the patient has no owner to report its recent behavior. And, of course, no owner to pay the bills.
I once heard a story about a young veterinarian, enthusiastic and altruistic but inexperienced with wildlife, who had agreed to treat an injured screech owl that a Good Samaritan had dropped off at his office. The vet carried the cardboard box into one of his exam rooms, peered inside, and was dismayed to find that the owl had died. He picked up the owl, a tiny creature about five inches tall, and laid it gently on his table. Unaware that screech owls play dead when stressed, he leaned over to give it a closer look, whereupon the owl sprang to life, launched itself off the table, and sank its talons into the vet’s nose. Unable to remove the owl himself he bellowed for his technicians, but they were at the other end of the hospital and couldn’t hear him. He ended up having to walk through the crowded waiting room with a small owl hanging from his nose, which reportedly he did with surprising aplomb. I don’t know the eventual outcome of the story; I would hope that this experience cemented his relationship with wildlife, although it could very well have had the opposite effect.
Later that day I stood in one of Alan’s exam rooms, watching as he opened the cardboard carrier a half inch, peered downward, and slowly reached inside. When he removed his hand he was expertly cradling the finch. Alan gazed blandly at the bird, then at me.
“Kernels of corn,” he said. “You’re rehabbing kernels of corn.”
“Really!” I said, returning his look. “So are you.”
Alan can’t help himself. It’s his nature to look for the absurdity in every situation, and as soon as he finds it, he feels compelled to point it out. Unfortunately, as soon as he points it out I feel compelled to start arguing with him, even if I secretly believe that his view may be valid. Such was the case here.
The person who had found the finch had gone out of his way to make sure the little bird arrived safely at a veterinarian’s office. The veterinarian had donated his expensive time to examine and treat the bird, then had called Maggie. Maggie had driven to the office, picked up the bird, then spent three and a half weeks feeding and caring for him. She had delivered him to me and now here I was, consulting a second normally well-paid veterinarian, whose advice would certainly include an indeterminate number of weeks of additional food and care. Should everything go well, I would eventually drive the bird back to his original location for his release.
And it was all for a house finch, a common, 23-gram species of songbird. In terms of time, money, and effort—not to mention gasoline—it might have seemed a bit absurd.
Except that it wasn’t.
Heaving a weary sigh, Alan went to work. He gently felt along the finch’s wing, almost imperceptibly moving each joint. “Stiff,” he said. “He needs a little physical therapy. Move it like this—back and forth—very slowly. When you feel any resistance, stop. Twice a day for a few days. Then try tossing him into the air. Gently. Just make sure he has something to land on besides the ground.”
“Great!” I said. “Thanks, Alan!”
“No problem,” said Alan. “That’ll be eight hundred dollars.”
The following day I caught the little finch and slowly manipulated his wing, struck anew by the fragility of songbirds and their ability to survive despite the obstacles that humans so carelessly throw into their paths. He was a trouper, wearing a resigned expression as I slowly moved his wing back and forth. And he did look resigned, despite the fact that birds’ faces are fixed and supposedly cannot show expression. The problem is not with the average bird’s inability to show expression; the problem is with the average human’s inability to perceive subtlety. Perhaps if birds had giant eyebrows to waggle and fleshy lips to distort, they’d be easier to figure out.
After a few days I gathered armloads of brush from a nearby field, piled it under one of the hanging branches, and then tossed the finch into the air, hoping that he wouldn’t need to use his makeshift landing pad. He flew halfway across the flight and landed gracefully on the branch, sending me into paroxysms of glee. A few days later he wasn’t flying as well, sending me into the depths of gloom. I can’t keep this up, I thought, suddenly appreciating another advantage to working at a wildlife center: instant emotional support. If a grounded bird starts flying, you celebrate with your compatriots; if he takes a turn for the worse, you share the pain. In my case John was gone for the day, so I had to wait for my support team to return home from elementary school.
“That little finch wasn’t flying so well today,” I said, after they’d jumped off the school bus and were accompanying me up our long dirt driveway.
“What?” Skye gasped, looking stricken. “Is he going to die?”
“No!” I said quickly. “He’s only….”
“How do you know?” she demanded. “How do you know he’s not lying dead on the ground right this minute?”
“He’s not dead,” said Mac. “And he’s not going to die, either. He’s probably just tired from all that flying.”
“There you go,” I said, adding the final link to our emotional daisy chain. “He’s going to be fine.”
Soon all I needed to do was to walk toward the finch and raise my hand, and he’d launch himself from his branch and fly to another. I kept wishing for another finch to keep him company—not that I wanted another bird to be injured, but if one were to be injured I wished that he would find his way here. This was where I made a serious “wish error.” As anyone who has ever heard a fairy tale can attest, all wish genies get a big kick out of messing with wishers who are not specific. I wished for another finch, and suddenly one appeared. But it was not a house finch.
It was an American goldfinch.
What the heck! one might reason. Goldfinches are in the same family as house finches. At least it’s a finch. That was my reaction.
At first.
I was unprepared for the phone call. A friend of a friend had found the goldfinch, dazed and motionless, outside one of her windows. She had placed it carefully into a cardboard box; when she opened the box a half hour later, it hadn’t moved. Could you please take him? she asked. He’s so beautiful and I don’t know what to do for him. I can drive him right over.
I hesitated, and a war broke out inside my head. I had spent a year working out the master plan, each subplan, and every individual detail. I had set my rehabilitation rules in stone: no injured birds. No birds from anyone but other rehabbers. No birds that couldn’t go right into the flight cage. I envisioned my rules as bowling pins and the goldfinch as a speeding ball, heading down the center line. I can’t crack this early in the game, I thought.
“Uhhhhh,” I said. “Actually, I’m not really set up for…I’m in a…kind of….”
It is almost impossible to predict how an impact injury, whether it be from a window or a car, will turn out. Minutes after the injury some birds are raring to go; others are dead. Some have broken bones or spinal injuries along with their head trauma, others appear to have no ill effects. Some will be bruised and in pain but appear to be improving, then three days later they’ll die when the blood clot you can’t see reaches a certain part of their brain. Many rehabbers keep birds who have suffered head trauma for a period of time after the injury even if they seem to be fine, just as an added safety measure.
I had no local number to give the woman with the goldfinch. Maggie and Joanne were the only bird rehabilitators within an hour of me, and both were at work. I did have a contingency plan for emergencies: I could keep one or two injured songbirds temporarily in pet carriers—which I had collected over the years and stored in a small stacked tower in the garage—in our extra bathroom. I could take the goldfinch, give him a small dose of the anti-inflammatory Maggie had given me, and if he wasn’t better in a couple of hours I could take him to Maggie. If he recovered quickly, he could go into the flight cage with the house finch.
“Is driving the bird an hour and a half away an option?” I asked. “Because if not, maybe I could….”
I made a silent vow: it would be only this once.
“Never mind,” I said. “Just bring him over.”
The goldfinch looked like a bird of the tropics, a dazzling combination of deep black and brilliant yellow. I gave him his medicine, put him into a small pet carrier, and left him alone in the extra bathroom for an hour. When I returned he had hopped off the floor of the towel-covered carrier and was sitting up on a perch.
“Hey,” said John at dinner that night. “What’s that bird doing in the bathroom?”
“There’s a bird in the bathroom?” asked Skye. “Can I see him?”
“Is he hurt?” asked Mac. “What kind of a bird is it?”
“It’s a goldfinch,” I said. “He hit a window, but he’s better now. He has to rest right now, but you can see him tomorrow morning before you go to school.”
“I thought you weren’t taking injured birds,” said John.
“I’m not,” I said firmly.
The following morning the goldfinch was active and alert, and had eaten all his niger seed and most of his mixed seed, so I released him into the flight cage. The house finch brightened visibly at the sight of another bird, rustling his feathers and watching closely as the goldfinch surveyed his new surroundings. After ten minutes I left them alone and walked back to the house, just in time to see Maggie getting out of her Jeep.
“Did you get my message?” she asked, reaching into her car and pulling out a small cardboard carrier. “One more for your flight cage. I thought I could drop him off on my way to work—can you help me take off his bandage?”
“No problem,” I said. “Step into my office.”
We went into the extra bathroom, where it would be easy to retrieve the bird should he escape while being handled. As I closed the door Maggie pulled a leather glove out of her jacket pocket, put it on, then started to open the cardboard carrier.
“What have you got in there?” I asked, puzzled.
“A house sparrow,” she replied.
“A house sparrow?” I said, grinning. “You want me to get you a whip and a chair?”
“Observe,” she said, holding her gloved hand up, index finger pointing toward the ceiling. Opening the carrier with her other hand, she ceremoniously dipped her index finger into its depths, then slowly removed it. Clamped onto the end was a small brown bird with a bandaged wing, its stout beak determinedly grinding away at the glove, its feet pedaling furiously through the air. Maggie reached into her pocket and pulled out a cotton washcloth, and in one smooth motion enveloped the sparrow in the washcloth and pulled it away from her glove.
“I’d watch this thing if I were you,” she said. “He’ll bite your finger off.”
As Maggie cushioned the sparrow inside the washcloth I flipped up one corner and removed the bandage. “Uh-oh,” I said, grimacing at the slightly swollen and hardened wing. “It doesn’t look too good.”
“Ouch!” said Maggie, who had just been pinched through the washcloth. “I can take him back to the vet who set it, but I can’t get there until the weekend.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “Leave him here and I’ll see if I can run him up to Alan tomorrow. The only thing is…it’s a house sparrow. Alan will kill me for bringing him a house sparrow.”
“Maybe we could get some magic markers and disguise it as a goldfinch,” said Maggie.
“Here’s where things get tricky,” I said.