(no subject)
To Kill A Mockingbird
There is a long story behind this. I love snakes, but what I went through with my neighbour over this bird, way before this snake showed up, over shadows my love for this particular snake. Click on the image to go to my gallery to see a larger view of the image, if that's really what you want to do.
I saw my neighbour, Lorie, outside when I came home, so I walked over to her house. I hadn't talked to her for over a week. By the time I got down the street, she was on the other side of the road with her son staring at the grass. I asked them what they were doing, and she said they were trying to help a baby bird.
Oh, great! I have perfect timing!
They tell me that they have been trying to help this bird since 8:00am, and it is now 7:30pm. It started out on their side of the road and has slowly ended up across the street without anyone managing to run it over or any of the cats in the neighbourhood eating it. Their cat had brought it and another baby to their doorstep sometime before dawn. One died, but this one lived. They were afraid to touch it because, and I have heard so many people say this, they thought that its parents would not take it back if they did.
I think a lot of people have watched 'The March of the Penguins'. Most birds would identify with each other by sound, not smell. You hear of dogs having an incredible sense of smell but birds, not so much. We know that they have great eyesight. They have to catch insects. Again, scent, I am not so sure, but I will be looking that up after my post.
She pointed at an adult bird who was flying around back and forth through the trees around us, obviously watching the baby and what we were doing. She said that they had been doing that all day, feeding it. If they would feed it on the ground, they might feed it no matter where we put it.
I asked her if she had any idea where the nest was. She said she wasn't sure, but there was an empty nest in a grapefruit tree beside her driveway. Again, if they would feed it on the ground, they would feed it anywhere. I really didn't feel like taking this baby bird home to feed it, and it was about 7:40pm by this time. I hardly had time or money to buy baby bird food.
We use to have a place called Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary on Long Boat Key. The founder died several years back. The county stopped funding it, and the community didn't come up with the money in time to save it. Also, the property taxes on the land, being out on the key, was so high that for years to come they would be looking at the need for further assistance beyond the year's need in which it closed. There was no way this was going to happen, so there was no good place to take little birdie.
Respecting my neighbour and her son's opinion that touching the baby would make its parents not take it back, I said I would do it their way and asked them to get me some paper towels. They did, and I tried to pick it up with paper towels. I had it in the towels, but it hopped out of them and onto my finger. I said, "Too late", with a smile on my face. My neighbour chuckled, but her son was agitated with me. It lifted up its head at me, expecting me to feed it. How cute! The parent was still flying to trees around us, as he had been, with an insect ready in his mouth to feed his baby.
I took it over to the grapefruit tree where we had a cooler under the nest so that I could stand on it to reach it. I put it in the nest, and it climbed and stood at the edge of the nest with its head up in the air. The baby was quiet as if it knew it was in a nest.
Once I was in the tree, I could not see what the parent was doing. I had them tell me where the parent was, so I could make the little bird chirp in its earshot. I did that by holding my finger over the baby's beak and within its sight, making it chirp.
It took about 15 minutes waiting for the bird to be close enough to hear its baby, but it finally did. You could tell the adult heard the baby. It then flew to the phone line and cocked its head looking down at me in the tree. We all stood back in the road, waiting to see what it would do.
We watched it fly back and forth from the grapefruit tree to a neighbouring loquat tree three times. Then, it flew to the phone line and started making a different bird call than we had heard it make before. Up came the other parent to the phone line, and the next thing they did made it obvious that we were successful!
They both started flying around back and forth to the grapefruit tree with insects to feed their baby. We were all so happy that what we had done worked, and Lorie said that they should call Myth Busters about how we discovered that touching, at least, this species of bird did not keep them from taking back their baby.
I went back home to tell my husband what had happened and went to sit down to write a journal entry about it, maybe an hour later. I wanted to have a picture to go with my journal entry, and it was dark by now. I figured I would just walk up to the tree to take some pictures, not bothering my neighbours at all.
I walked up to the tree, took a couple of shots and noted that I did not see the adults. I would think that they would be squawking at me, diving at me or something. I could hear the little bird making a light chirping sound. I squinted me eyes to try to see the nest a bit better, and I noticed something shiny and ess-ed around a branch at the back of the nest from where I was standing. Oh my god, that is a snake!
I ran to my neighbours' door and rang their doorbell. I told her what I was doing and that a snake was in the tree, could she please get me a broom or something. She did, and I got the snake's tail looped around it. I pulled, pulled and pulled, but the snake was not letting go of the bird. All of a sudden, the snake pops out the other side of the nest with the baby in its mouth. At first, I thought it was too late, but then, I saw the baby moving. I got the broom on the snake's neck and was vigourously shaking it, trying to get it to drop the baby. It didn't work. All we could do was watch.
I went to take pictures of the cute baby bird we had saved, and I ended up taking pictures of a corn snake eating a baby bird. It wasn't what I wanted to have happen or expected, but I took the opportunity to take pictures.