Horatio’s No-Good, Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day

Not to turn in another article while doing so anyway but at about 8:00 pm my wife and I figured out that the weird noise coming from her car engine, which was driving our cats crazy, was a bird she had “hit” either today or yesterday, (time in our house these last few days is not something we’ve been keeping track of all that well), and which had somehow stashed itself into some kind of compartment.

We get it unstuck but it can’t fly. Couldn’t walk all that well but as I found out it could bite the shit out of your fingers. So after we get it settled away from our cats I get on the interwebs and start looking for songbird rescue groups in CT. I get some woman on the phone who says she can’t take any more birds, and that the picture I sent her looks like a dying bird to her, but if I’m willing to try she’ll walk me through what she would do.

So what am I going to say to that?

Off to the store I go for unflavored pedia-lyte and blueberries.  The idea is to feed the bird, (a female Northern Cardinal as my new best friend tells me from the picture I texted her), a few drops of pedia-lyte every 15 minutes and then see if it will eat a mashed up blueberry.  If the bird makes it to tomorrow, which I’m told isn’t likely, there’s an animal hospital on the way to my office that will take in song birds without an appointment.  Left unsaid is my guess that they probably feed them to raptors but whatever.

When I get back it looks like the bird is dead, but it turns out it’s just stuck its head through one of the air holes and is quite alive.  My wife gets the pedia-lyte into the side of her beak, (apparently it’s important to sort of dribble it through the side instead of firing it right down their throats), and the thing perks up and wants more.  I say no, because the expert said to do it every 15 minutes.  We wait.

15 minutes later we go to feed the bird again.  It’s not near an air hole so, as instructed, I pick it up and kind of hold it’s head up.  The beak opens, we get a couple of drops in the side, bird freaks the fuck out.  It’s trying to fly but can’t.  We try again, I try to give the bird a little more room, it responds by trying harder to fly.  Might have gotten two drops in.

Plan B.  I put the bird down and get its head to the air hole.  It won’t open its beak this time.  Because it fucking died you see.

This day can go fuck itself in the ass with a red hot poker.