just to commemorate
Jules and the boys came over to dinner tonight and then afterwards we walked the dogs down to the creek. On the creek lawn we came across a Cedar Waxwing just laying there, breathing but comatose. I decided to bring it home and see if it was exhausted from migration or something like that. We could protect and give it water at least. Jules looked it up and there is a thing where Cedar Waxwings sometimes get drunk on fermented berries. That sounded hopeful. Maybe it was as simple as that. But no. About 15 minutes after we had it tucked into a nice dry shoebox it just stopped breathing and that was it. Now I'm thinking it might have been diseased. I did take care to only carry it with one hand and wash that hand as soon I got the bird settled into a safe place. But then we had to think of body disposal. So we took the household burnable papers out to the burn pile, added some extra wood to make it a lasting fire and put the bird box on top. Here's a picture of the fire. I thought it looked quite beautiful in the last rays of afternoon light.
