Baby birds . . . coming out of my ears!

So, you heard about the baby birds, who arrived on July 21. In just 10 short days, they have already eaten over 100 pounds of baby chicken food. They are growing, and growing feathers.

A few days ago I started to tell their tale. After getting a phone call that went, “Hi there. I've got several boxes of baby birds here, they're half dead, do you want them?”, Lena and I ran off to the rescue and brought several boxes of birds back to Rikki's.

The next several hours at the refuge were spent with everyone available, eyedroppering water into tiny little beaks. Six people, trying to save several hundred birds, is a very difficult job. We separated them into batches, based on their strength and health. Some were ready to start eating, all we had on hand was adult bird mash, but it would do in a pinch.

Others needed their little bodies warmed with a hair dryer, and water dripped into their little beaks. Obviously, there was nothing we could do about the ones that were already dead, except give them a home at our Rainbow Bridge Cemetery.

Thankfully, we lost very few throughout the day. After several hours, when they were all stabilized, we had to figure out where they were going to live. Vincent, Slinky, Timmy, Boss Man, and several of the other naughty kitties had some pretty good ideas. However, we humans, had a major difference of opinion.

We began to build an area in one of the day runs off the 9th Life Retirement, Assisted Living and Psychiatric Center. (If you need an explanation on the name, just come out and visit.) It would have to be protected from the weather, and have heat lamps, so the little babies would stay about 100° for the first few days. While Basil and Jonathan began to build, I went to the store for baby chicken supplies. Normally, you could walk into any farm store, and walk out with all the baby chicken food, chicken waterers, and everything you needed. Everybody in all the 4-H clubs had bought up all the supplies, to show off the baby animals they had been raising. I had to go to three stores, and still did not have everything I needed.

The baby bird area was almost built, when the sky turned black, and the wind began to blow. Was there a chance in heck that we could get the job done, before we got soaked? Drip, drip, drip, . . . . Sorry, this will have to be continued . . . . I get yelled at when I blog to long . . . .