Bird story from a couple of weeks ago in The Amalgamated Aggromulator

(Arbi inspired me to go back and find this in Facebook.)

FIRST UPDATE:

Late afternoon yesterday. The mysterious bird back in the cluttered corner of the living room would not fly elsewhere, and therefore not out of the front door we had left open two rooms away. It would just hop up out of the baskets and Japanese bric-a-brac, and then hop back down, vanishing when approached, and we would sometimes hear it singing. Tentative approaches were fruitless.

This morning the singing came from my bedroom, where a chase would be about nine times as hopeless, but where letting the bird fly out would be a great deal easier.
I took the screens off my windows in there (it’s going to be a pain getting them back on) and closed the bedroom door, leaving the bird free to realize it was alone and to escape.

A bit later, when I stepped in to look, two surprising things became clear simultaneously: the bird could not fly, although it could outright sprint in a fluttering way . . . and my cat (whom I had closed out of the bedroom but who had simply gone outside and come in through one of the open windows) unexpectedly proved to have the instincts of a sheepdog, at least for today - intently chasing it out into the open while refusing to try to grab it or do anything but stare at it closely!

The first chase that made these things clear went right past me and my slow hands, and the bird disappeared again in the shambles. The cat moved along the edge of the room with its improvised tables and sat down in a particular spot, clearly having information I lacked. With this unexpected partner, I moved a defunct printer out of the way, the cat leaped out of sight and chased the bird back into view again, and I caught it in my hands.

The web was searched. A call was made. Pics were taken and emailed. The verdict: A song sparrow, definitely a fledgling and in its flightless wandering stage. Still within the length of time where its parents may find it. I put it outside in a thickety patch with plenty of cover on the west side of the house.

My cat and I are both very pleased with each other.

SUBSEQUENT COMMENTS:

I don’t get the cat. Granted, she’s always been reluctant to pick on anything her own size while interpreting animals distinctly smaller than her as apparently being her own size, but this bird was tiny, and it’s not as though she’s never caught/killed a tweetybird. But this time she meant no predation beyond the seeking. She could have closed several times during both chases in my room. I know from playing with her that she’s a mighty lightning grabber. She just didn’t want to.

She wasn’t even worked up about it. Didn’t begrudge my taking it. She’s asleep over there on the sofa.
Explain something, cat.

And the mother has found the baby!

SECOND UPDATE:

So I thought my cat had run straight out and ruined the story.

You see, only a little while later, I heard Mom out in the yard: “Alex! Zoey has a bird in her mouth!”

. . . Gorrammit, the doors are open, aren’t they. Plus the screens off the windows.

(And maybe Daddy gave the cat the wrong lesson when he grabbed the bird. Very likely.)

:-(

So I ran outside, and there was the cat a ways off with a mouthful of bird.

“Don’t let her take it in the house!”

Right. So I closed the doors, front and back. I saw the cat carrying her mouthful away through the asparagus into scarce areas of the yard. Circle of life. Bird critically injured already; she’ll go eat it.

Damn that was a good story for awhile. :-(

So forty-five minutes passed. A little more. Almost a full hour.

I was helping Mom divide kahili ginger out on our plant-filled enclosed back porch. . . . And the cat walked in still carrying the bird.

I prevailed on her to put it down. (Not by force. Voice. Raw entreaty. Maybe I speak cat. I dunno.)

And the bird, COMPLETELY UNHURT, flutter-ran off and disappeared into a pile of pots in the corner.

I put the cat in the house and hastened to put the screens back on my bedroom windows.

I found that I had a new view of how this fledgling might have found its way so far inside the house.

And of why, yesterday afternoon and evening, the cat had alternately ignored the clear, piping bird calls and gone back into that corner of the living room, finding her way all the way back behind the boxes and baskets there - but without any pouncing.

Right now, on the back porch, the little bird has hopped up a ladder-like stack of pots onto the center tables and is happily poking around in all the trays of plants there.

Its parents are calling confusedly outside. The doors to the back porch are open. They’ll find their fledgling as soon as it resumes calling them.

Zoey wants us to let her outside again.

Darn you, cat, and your adoptive foibles.

Last updated August 20, 2016