Flyaway (10 page)

As much as I had wanted to return to the goshawk nest, time passed too quickly and by the time I returned all the nestlings were gone. As I ran through the woods I could hear the young ones' wailing cries, and occasionally I'd catch a glimpse of a large dark bird flying swiftly through the trees. I wanted nothing more than to sit under an old hemlock for an entire afternoon and wait for them, but the days of long, lazy afternoons had vanished.

I moved the two fledgling Carolina wrens and three newly arrived fledgling purple finches into the flight cage with the house finch, the catbird, and the waxwing. Maggie arrived with the wood thrush, an adult whose broken wing had healed, and the downy woodpecker, whom she had raised. When I entered the flight cage the wrens would freeze and the finches would quickly cluster around the house finch, who had assumed the role of den mother; the thrush would vanish into the underbrush, not to emerge until I had left; and the woodpecker would hike jauntily along the mesh until she was two or three feet away from me, determine that I wasn't all that interesting, and turn around and go about her business.

Next door things were not so genteel. If the songbird flight was an English drawing room, the jay/grackle flight was the local pub: noisy, boisterous, and filled with outsized personalities looking for trouble. The grackles were slightly older and a bit larger than the jays, and occasionally seemed to be able to in
timidate them through sheer size and agility. But the jays never seemed to run out of creative deviltry. They'd steal the toys, hide the food, and, waiting until one of the grackles was distracted, rush up behind them—simply, it seemed, in order to watch them jump. Once I found one of the jays flying about with a grackle tail feather in his beak; although I wanted to assume that the feather had molted naturally, I couldn't guarantee the jay hadn't crept up behind the grackle and yanked it out.

The one member of the group who didn't conform to type was Norbert, the smallest blue jay, who always reminded me of the quiet, bookish mascot of a street gang. Although from time to time I would see him bathing, flying around the flight cage, and interacting with the other birds, he preferred to watch the action from a sunny perch. He had somehow convinced at least two of the other jays to feed him, and he would sit on a wide branch like a prince on a throne and graciously accept their offerings. At one point one of Norbert's feet had suddenly and briefly become swollen, and for a few days I had to catch him for a daily foot check. This was easier said than done; for all his sedentary ways, he was surprisingly quick when he wanted to be. He dodged my net, wiggled out of my hands, and made such a commotion that by the time I caught him everyone else was in an uproar. One day he flew to a corner, and as I approached him all five of the other jays flew over and perched on branches between us. They stared balefully at me, silent and motionless, like a small squadron of bodyguards protecting their client from a familiar and not very threatening enemy.

When it came to downtime the two species would separate. The jays gathered into a small flock at one end of the flight, while the grackles perched together at the other. Occasionally on a hot, lazy afternoon I would quietly enter the flight cage and sit on a log in an unoccupied corner, where I could watch them without being obtrusive. The grackles were more aware of me and, being recent allies instead of siblings, not as affectionate with each other. Perching together but only occasionally touching, they would fluff out their feathers and relax, but only rarely did I see them close their eyes.

The blue jays, however, would position themselves comfortably, rustle their feathers, preen each other gently, and, in time, lean against each other and close their eyes; sometimes one would even tuck his head beneath a wing. And Norbert would dream. Drowsily nestling down into a soft circle of feathers, he would point his beak straight up at the ceiling and chortle and coo to himself—eyes closed, fast asleep.

 

“You feed those things every half an hour?” asked the woman incredulously, staring down into the wicker picnic basket. “Are you out of your mind?”

I was in my usual Saturday morning position, sitting in a collapsible chair under a tree and watching the kids play soccer, occasionally glancing at my watch and doling out mealworms to the waiting nestlings. Every now and then a parent would stop by and peer into the basket. When they likened me to Mother Teresa, I'd envision myself surrounded by golden rays of light, wearing a halo and smiling beatifically; when they questioned my sanity, I'd envision myself in an old-fashioned black-and-white striped prison uniform, scowling ferociously, holding a ball and chain instead of a wicker basket.

What was the matter with me, anyway?

I was so busy that I rarely had time for reflection, but during the occasional lull—or when asked a pointed question—I would try to consider the Big Picture. What good was I doing, exactly? Would any of the nestlings I labored over that summer survive to adulthood, then go on to breed? Could they ever overcome the huge hurdle of being raised and released by an alien species? Jayne bands her fledgling birds before releasing them and sees many of them year after year, so I know if I raise them right they have a decent chance. But with my limited time and resources, why was I raising common and plentiful songbirds instead of working to conserve habitat? Or raising money for endangered species? Or fighting global warming?

If we're talking about the greatest return for one's effort, then never mind the baby birds—why rehab wildlife at all?

Exactly, critics say; rehabbers are nothing but a bunch of bunny-huggers wasting their time. Populations are what count, not individuals. It's not worth the effort.

First, when any potential critic looks down on me from his lofty position and deigns to grade my effort, I tend to ignore (or mock) him out of principle. But this is an argument easily won. Although wildlife rehabilitation begins with the individual, there is a ripple effect that extends far beyond the single animal. If critics of wildlife rehabilitation are looking for numbers, they will find them not in the release rates of a single rehabilitator but in the numbers of people who have been reached and educated because of her (or him).

This is not to denigrate the principle of wildlife rehabilitation because, unlike biologists, we rehabbers do believe in the value of the individual. It is easy to dismiss an unfamiliar group, whether it be a flock of bluebirds, a herd of elephants, or a village of Tanzanians. I have never seen a bluebird, one might say, I have never been near an elephant, and I don't know any Tanzanians. But all that changes with contact and familiarity.

My friend India Howell, with whom I lived on the farm in Maine, took a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro when she was in her mid-forties. She had never been to Africa and knew little about the Tanzanian people, outside of the occasional news reports of villages devastated by poverty and AIDS. But while she was on vacation she was offered a job as manager of a safari company, and when she moved to Arusha she began to encounter the street kids mentioned in the news reports. Once befriended they were no longer nameless and faceless, and no longer the blurry part of a problem too large to address. India founded and now runs the Rift Valley Children's Village, an orphanage outside Keratu, and she channels certain donations to help the surrounding villages.

Wildlife rehabilitators find themselves in the same position but faced with a more skeptical public, many of whom seem to believe that wild animals are
little more than programmed robots. Some loudly and indignantly question why rehabbers “waste” their time with animals when they could be helping people, a query even more absurd than asking a pilot why he or she is not a firefighter. Just as India saw something in the children of Tanzania that she could not turn away from, so rehabilitators see something in a wild animal that can be found nowhere else. We crave a connection—no matter how brief or tenuous—with a wild creature, and we are willing to play by rules that seem designed to break our hearts in order to do it.

We clean, feed, study, attend conferences, amass arcane knowledge, and learn to handle the creatures who fear us. Our triumph is to accept an injured wild animal, treat its injuries, carefully learn each one of its quirks and preferences, help it heal, and then let it go. If things go according to plan, we will never see it again.

Somehow, this is enough.

“Do you ever fall in love with the animals you take care of?” I asked a rehabilitator, naively, years and years ago.

She gave me a small, rueful smile. “Every single one,” she said.

What rehabilitators learn all too quickly is that each animal, each bird who comes through the door is unique. Species may share general traits, but each individual is different, each one is memorable. And as soon as this becomes clear, the enormity of what humankind is doing to the natural world becomes all the more harrowing.

Critics may look for numbers, but from that point of view all nonprofit work is the veritable drop in the bucket. Millions are under seige; what's the point of helping fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand? The point is in the value of the individual, and in the ensuing ripple effect. The drop in the bucket is the convulsing mockingbird; the ripple effect is that a woman brings it to a rehabilitator, who convinces the woman to stop using pesticides on her lawn, and the woman returns home and convinces her neighbors to do the same. The drop in the bucket is the nest of owlets fallen from a chain-sawed tree; the ripple effect is that a man brings them to a rehabilitator, who dissuades the man from
clear-cutting the rest of his property, and the man brings up the effects of clear-cutting at the next town board meeting.

Ninety-five percent of wildlife injuries are the direct result of human activity. Our recent national leaders have championed business and money at the expense of everything else, and deemed a robin's life—since it has “no commercial value”—barely worth noticing. If there is nowhere for a member of the public to bring a single injured wild animal, then the animals' collective lives will become even cheaper than they already are. If the average person's initial concern over an injured bird is met with nothing but shrugs and apathy, he will conclude that wildlife really isn't worth saving, and the war over intrinsic value will truly be lost.

There is a story that every rehabilitator knows, written by the renowned anthropologist, ecologist, and writer Loren Eiseley. A boy walks down a beach covered with stranded starfish, methodically picking them up and throwing them back into the sea. An old man sees him and says, “Why are you wasting your time? There must be thousands of them! How can what you're doing possibly make a difference?”

The boy picks up another starfish, tosses it into the sea, and regards the man. “It made a difference to that one,” he says.

I sat in my chair at the soccer game, alternately feeding and cheering, unable to reduce my tweezers and worms and picnic basket filled with hungry nestlings to a clever and convincing sound bite. Eventually I would reach the point of admitting that I was just too exhausted to raise children and songbirds at the same time, but halfway through my first summer I still believed that I had the will and the energy to do anything.

“Are you out of your mind?” asked the woman.

“Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I am.”

There's a fine art to begging. One must act suitably pitiful for the easy mark, yet be ready to turn on the aggression for a tougher crowd. And should the need arise, it always helps to be able to pack it in, get your own food, and feed yourself.

One of the most skillful beggars I've ever encountered was Orangina, an orphaned female northern cardinal raised by another rehabber and named for her bright orange beak. She arrived on a cloudy summer morning, slender and wide-eyed, her crest held at a tentative angle. I put her into the flight cage with the congenial and easygoing songbird group. Cardinals, with their thick, seed-cracking beaks, are actually large finches, so at least she had a few distant cousins among the new crowd.

Delighted to have 200 square feet of flying space yet slightly intimidated by her new home, Orangina initially perched quietly on the outskirts of the group. Whenever I'd enter the flight, though, she'd spring into action: fixing me with a melting stare, she'd hunker down on a branch, make heartrending little trilling sounds, and flutter her wings so weakly I was sure she was dying of hunger. Normally I thought of myself as immune to this sort of nonsense—once a fledgling can feed itself, it should do so—but the delicate, tremulous Orangina sliced through my resolve like a steel machete. I'd give her a bite of food, then another, reasoning that she might be having adjustment problems;
then I'd leave the flight, peer back in through the door, and see her happily hopping about, expertly scarfing up seeds and fruit.

Within a day another beggar arrived, but this one wanted nothing to do with me. “I hear you have a waxwing,” said Joanne's voice through my telephone. “You want another one?”

Joanne's waxwing had been found as a nestling—perfectly healthy, but minus her legal guardians—on the sidewalk in front of a bar in a large urban area. “It was one of those miracle births,” she said. “No nest. Not even a tree. Nothing but concrete, and there's this little cedar waxwing. Amazing she didn't get stepped on.” Now almost grown and eating on her own, she just needed a flight cage and another waxwing, both of which I could provide.

Once again I headed out to the flight cage, flanked by Mac and Skye and carrying a cardboard carrier. We passed the Parrot Gazebo, where Zack and Mario were drowsing in the sun. Mario saw us and snapped to attention. “War!” he shouted.

“There he goes again,” said Mac. “He must know you have a bird in that box.”

The parrots have their own miniature flight cage, an eight-foot cube of wood and chicken wire, built after Zack nearly ended up a meal for a broad-winged hawk. At that point Zack's wings were clipped, and oblivious to the danger, I used to take him outside. One afternoon I was sitting on the deck while Zack, less than two feet away, cruised the railing. What I failed to realize was that the hungry broadwing circling above the house had a clear view of Zack, but thanks to the large canvas umbrella over my head, no view of me. When the hawk dove for him, Zack let out a scream that froze my blood and launched himself off the deck; because of his clipped wings, he quickly lost momentum and coasted to the ground. The hawk expected Zack to fly straight away and overshot his target, giving me time to scramble up the railing, hurl myself off the deck, and shrieking like a lunatic, race over and gather up the traumatized parrot. Whether Zack was more upset by the hawk or by my rescue was anyone's guess, but the next morning a carpenter arrived, and soon my carefully
hoarded clothing budget disappeared into the hawk-proof Parrot Gazebo. Filled with natural branches, ropes, and hanging toys, it was nestled partway under a healthy hemlock tree, which provided areas of both sun and shade.

“I have names for the waxwings,” I said. “Yin and Yang. The balancing forces of the universe.”

“But they're just tiny little birds,” protested Skye.

I was eager to see how the two waxwings would interact, as neither had had any contact with its own species since a few days after hatching. While Mac and Skye watched from outside the flight cage, I opened the carrier and the new waxwing flew up onto a branch. Clearly taken aback, Yin gazed at the clustered group of finches and the two wrens, at the thrush, the woodpecker, the catbird, and the cardinal. Finally she turned her head, saw the other waxwing, and like a miniature homing device, flew to his side.

It was obvious that Yin had found her parent, even though Yang was only a week or so older than she was. Beak open, wings vibrating so violently I thought she'd fall off the branch, Yin was the frenzied fledgling that few adult birds can resist. But Yang, being a fledgling himself, managed to resist her. Each time Yin landed beside him, begging piteously, Yang stiffened into a what-fresh-hell-is-this pose of personal affront and flew off to the other end of the flight. Although perfectly capable of feeding herself, Yin followed doggedly, grimly determined to be adopted. I wondered if Orangina would take notice and transfer her begging behavior to the beleaguered Yang, but she remained true to me. At least, for the time being. For the next ten minutes I stayed in the flight cage while Yin pursued Yang, Orangina pursued me, and the rest of the birds watched with interest.

“I think the big one's going to get tired of running away from the little one,” said Mac.

“That's what I'm counting on,” I replied.

On the way back to the house we paused at the Parrot Gazebo. “Shower time!” I cried. Mac ran to put on the stereo while Skye unrolled the hose. Our parrot shower history is a tangled tale of emergent souls, of song and re
demption, all ultimately resolved with Aretha Franklin's version of “Chain of Fools.”

Zack came to live with us when he was three months old. Mario, however, was a rescue: he arrived when he was five years old and we were his fourth home. My friend Carol Speier had raised him from a chick, sold him to what she thought was a good home, then found him years later sitting alone and dejected in the back of a feed store. She identified him by a toe on his left foot, partially missing since birth. She took him home, called me with his sad story, and I smuggled him into the house when John was on a trip.

“When Daddy gets home, don't say anything about the new parrot,” I had said to the kids, who were then three and four. “Just give him some time to relax, and we'll surprise him later.”

“Okay!” the kids agreed enthusiastically. Minutes later John walked into the house to a giddy chorus of “
Wait till you see our new bird!
”

At first, there could not have been more of a difference between the two parrots. Zack swaggered through the house like a feathered James Cagney, constantly demanding all kinds of attention and immediately screaming and biting us if he didn't get it. Mario, on the other hand, sat quietly on his perch, watchful and reserved, accepting attention if it was offered but being careful not to ask for it. If Zack was the house id, Mario was its superego.

Then I put on a Motown tape.

I have a vast collection of old cassette tapes, each one a medley of favorite songs I recorded from albums that bit the dust years ago. I'm sure some technowhiz could transfer them all onto CDs or into an iPod, or through some sort of singing telephone, but the whole idea just gives me a headache; instead, I guard my cassette collection, dreading the day when one will break and I will be forced to try to duplicate it.

When Mario joined the household there was almost always music playing, the type depending on the time and mood of the participants. Skye was famous for her frighteningly dead-on imitation of Joe Cocker singing his gravelly chorus of “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” although I had to keep hiding the
tape so she wouldn't discover the rest of the lyrics. John went for 1960s rock, featuring Jimi Hendrix's crashing guitar solos or, if he was feeling moody and existential, the Doors' “The End.” Zack was partial to punk-funk and synthesizer bands; blasting Talking Heads' “Swamp” or Soft Cell's “Tainted Love” would send him flying through the house, eyes flashing, screaming enthusiastically. My own musical favorites could fill an entire bookcase, but whenever I was feeling tragic and put-upon, I would return to Bruce Springsteen's “New York City Serenade,” which I would play thirty or forty times in a row after donning headphones. The only family member who didn't seem to care what was playing was Mac, who would listen good-naturedly to anything.

Whenever I put on some particularly raucous rock 'n' roll, Mario would stare at me while I drummed on the table and sang along, looking like a nerdy neighborhood kid who wants to join the fun but has no idea how to do it. Finally one morning, when the kids were at school and I was faced with the onerous job of cleaning the kitchen, I slid my favorite Motown tape into the deck. The first song is The Temptations' “Ain't Too Proud to Beg,” a song which elicits from me a Pavlovian response: as soon as David Ruffin shouts that first line of heartbreak, I'm ready to party.

As it turned out, so was Mario. Dancing around the kitchen with Zack on my shoulder, I turned to find Mario bobbing his head in time to the music. The louder I sang, the more energetic he became; he seemed particularly entranced by my rendition of “I Can't Get Next to You,” even though I couldn't hit Eddie Kendricks's high notes if my life depended on it.

Belting out the soul-filled “I've Got to Use My Imagination" along with Gladys Knight, I raised my arms and mimed the agony of good love gone bad, inspiring Mario to swing upside down from a rope toy he'd previously ignored. During “Son of a Preacher Man” he climbed back up to his perch and whistled furiously, even though Dusty Springfield—being a white girl from Britain—had no business being on a Motown tape at all. Like an astonished 1950s-era parent who watched Elvis transform her quiet child, I watched as Percy Sledge brought out the party animal in Mario.

This was when I got carried away.

Hearing the sound effects of “I Wish It Would Rain,” I had a brilliant idea and scurried off to get the plant mister. I squirted it energetically above Mario's head, covering him with a fine shower of droplets. Suddenly I stopped dead and held my breath, appalled at what I had done.

African greys are notorious for their opinions about water. Although parrots raised by people who know what they're doing almost always love a bath, a bad experience can frighten them and drastically change their opinion. Greys, being especially sensitive and emotional, tend to go overboard; either they love to bathe or they act as if you're trying to douse them with lighter fluid. At that point, I had no idea if Mario liked water or not. I waited, wondering if the party was about to come to a grinding halt.

For what seemed like a long time Mario stood still. Then he rustled his wings, shook his tail feathers, and started bobbing his head to “Dock of the Bay.”

The party was still on.

Ten minutes later I had dragged one of those long plastic clothing storage units out from under my bed, dumped all the clothes out onto the floor, filled it with two or three inches of water, and lugged it over to the kitchen table, where Mario watched the gleefully screaming Zack perch on its edge, jump in, flap his wings until the water was flying, and jump back out again. After Zack had enough, I carried Mario over. Stepping uncertainly onto the edge, he hesitated.

And at that exact moment “Chain of Fools"began. Aretha Franklin's soaring voice cut through the brief silence, and Mario jumped into the pool. Not only did my kitchen remain uncleaned, it ended up with an inch of water on the floor. But it was worth it; Mario had crossed the bathing divide and added his musical preference to our already cacophonous household.

A hot day in August was even better, with the sun shining, the music coming through the deck speakers, and no kitchen floor to have to clean up. Skye turned on the hose as the first song began.

“She's a very kinky girl!” howled Rick James. “The kind you don't take home to mother!”

“Hey!” shouted Skye. “That's not the Motown tape!”

“I couldn't find it,” called Mac.

“No problem,” I said. “Technically, it's still Motown. Just twenty-some years later.”

Skye twisted the nozzle and aimed the hose into the air, where it fell like rain onto the gyrating parrots. Soon we were all contorting ourselves around the cage, dancing in a way that delighted the birds but probably would have baffled the songwriter. Kids don't listen to lyrics, I assured myself; what's important is the festive moment and the punk-funk beat.

“She's a super freak! Super freak!” caroled Skye.