This is a non-political, non-issue related diary written in the middle of a raw, ragged, painful moment of loss and sorrow brought on by a dove.
It will be long, and rambling, and far too detailed about mundane things, but that's just how we're rolling tonight. Its also somewhat photo-heavy. Slow connections, ye be warned.
So, about a month and a half ago, I found a dead baby dove in my front yard. I've never been a huge fan of birds, especially not parrots and their large beaked ilk, as they have a hunger, unsatisfied, for the innocent fingers of a million trusting humans. I felt pity though, and wanted to bury the poor nestling with a bit more care than nature had chosen to show.
To my surprise, the little bird moved a bit and opened it's eyes. Wee, tiny, brown eyes.
A quick run at Google and I had some basic bird rescue tips. A cozy box, warm, moist interior, and a bit of solitude to allow the baby to recover. An evening passed with me sure that I'd wake up to my cats wondering why I had brought them a treat but failed to unpack it. Nope. Those tiny brown eyes made it, and they wanted to be fed.
Baby bird formula isn't something I normally keep in the house, but I did have plenty of boxes of mostly eaten childhood diabetes sugary breakfast cereal, which Google assured me would make a slurry worthy of my new title of "Bird Mom."
Have you ever tired to feed a baby bird from a spoon? Yeah, turns out that this particular bird was a White-Winged Dove (Z. asiatica) and they are one of the few species that feeds by sucking rather than cramming i.e. the baby will stick its own beak down mom or dad's throat rather than waiting for one of them to just barf in the waiting peep-hole.
"Cool!" I thought, I could care for a bird and remain free of the stereotype of bulimia at the same time. (No offense intended to the sufferers of that horrible disorder, you're beautiful just the way you are.) I had to find another feeding method though, this was taking forever, and I was supposed to do it every couple of hours. Much like with my own human children, I tried to find a quick technical fix. When that went disastrously wrong I made a late night trip to the all-night pet store and bought a big 'ole bag of baby bird formula and a hot coffee from Sonic. (Mixed together at 1:1, I call it an All Night Peep Me Up) Somehow, I ended up with an extra cup, and had the brilliant idea to simulate an adult bird mouth in warm, yielding, Styrofoam.
Kids, this absolutely worked and soon the new bird was eating like a champ. Whoever coined the phrase about eating like a bird and applied it to those with a small appetite had obviously never tended a hungry nestling. I hadn't seen so much warm mushy goop sucked from a hole since I was in Boy Scouts. Fun fact here, doves have an enormous crop, which is like a storage sack for those lean times when mom and dad are out pecking seeds and sloughing their own fluid filled crop-skin cells to make a delicious meal for you, junior.
You learn about things like crops when they are the most obvious indicator of your bird's full/empty status. You also get an eye-full when you're bleary at three in the morning and shoving ground seed paste in the general direction of this 'so ugly its adorable' thing sitting on your kitchen table. Didjaknow? Its right there on the side of the baby bird food bag. Dire warnings about overly full crops, burping crops, and the dreaded crop burn. So you shove, but gently, and try to learn the lessons Mother Sack of Thin Skin on the Neck Connecting the Esophagus to the Greater Gizzard/Stomach Metroplex wants to teach you.
After our little cram sessions, Stevie (so named after Stevie Nicks of Feetwood Mac fame, the most dove referencing of the late 60s English-American rock bands) would need a bath. One simply doesn't send a younger to bed with seed all over their face. Thus was born the tradition of Dove Soup.
Dove Soup
1/2 cup 102 Degree Tap Water (like warm bath water)
1 Messy Little Dove
Gently place dove in water. Using finger, drip water where food is mostly thickly concentrated. Bathe dove until clean. Dry thoroughly with warm towel.
Serves 1
After bath time was the most cuddly time for Stevie. Wanting to stay warm from the bath, she would burrow, snuggle, and otherwise try and press her entire body against the warmest thing she could find. This was usually the base of my neck under the hair on the back of my head. Luckily, she didn't read one of the many books on doves I purchased that all said that doves weren't cuddly, weren't snuggly, and don't you even think about having a dove sit on your shoulder buddy. Stevie lived on my shoulder. Well, I say that but I don't mean literally LIVED there. She had a cage and I had a day job and never the twain did meet. She had care during the day with plenty of interaction, but when I got home in the evenings, she would start this little dance that looked like she was shrugging her shoulders rapidly, progressing in to full fledged wing flaps as I got closer to the cage. Once open, she would either stand there excitedly shrugging till I picked her up or, once she figured out what those wings were for anyway, jump out at me, flapping up a storm, making that squeaky wing noise that is unique to White-wings until talon collided with cotton and she latched on to my shirt.
Putting Stevie down was difficult. Once she figured out perching, she perched like a champ. The value used here for "champ" could also be substituted with "white-knuckled" if doves had knuckles with whitening ability. Once she started flying, Daddy was only a crazy, chaotic moment away where his little dove had to beat furiously at the air that separated them until it gave in and magically whisked her to Shoulderland. Later as 'controlled flight' became a phrase bandied around the house, the top of the head was the preferred landing zone.
Mentally, putting Stevie down was difficult. This was the sort of unconditional love you always want from a puppy, but can't seem to get past the time the puppy tore up your entire collection of mint condition Kenner issue Star Wars figures. I mean, my god, I had "chimp-face" Leah and three different Darth Vaders. Stevie wasn't in to all that though, just getting fed, getting a bath (which morphed in to a bowl shower, then a finger shower, then no thanks, I prefer dry seeds) and getting some quality time with the warmest neck she knew.
I went places with this little bird on me. She loved it. She loved going outside for walks, and watching the light move around on the bright rectangle that Daddy sure seemed to stare at for an awful long time. She liked sitting still, in the Sun, letting her skin make vitamin D while other doves pecked at the copious piles of seeds strewn around the back porch.
I haven't even mentioned the peep. It started out as something I barely heard, indeed, I thought I imagined it. This tenuous little sound that started at a high C# and went on for a quarter beat and jumped up to an E natural. peeeEP Soon, it would fill the room with a sudden exclamation PEEEE EP!
Stevie peeped like it was her second job. One day, right after feeding she made the famous "The Bird is Full" noise, which sort of went like peep Peep PEEP! Its the same sort of sound you hear when you get a power-up in a racing game. Its an accomplishment. Congratulations! This crop is full!
It was a lovely sound.
As kids do, Stevie grew up quickly, and soon wanted to fly. Our outside walks stopped after she flew in to a tree and I had to coax her down. I knew that I needed to release her to fulfill her original mission of being a bird, but I was selfish and created a few excuses to keep her around past the time when all little birds leave the nest.
Sadly, the issue was forced today. While bringing her cage in from a couple hours of fresh air, I noticed there was no peep. Stevie wasn't flapping, wasn't really moving much at all, just giving me the little wing shrug and cocked head. I opened the door of the cage and she didn't bolt, just sort of stood there.
That's when I found the cut. What I think had happened is that she got her head wedged between one of the bars of the cage and some plastic at the bottom. I had selected the material I made the cage from to ensure she couldn't get her head caught, but one tiny detail, a zip-tie holding some corrugated plastic for the removable cage bottom system I had worked up, crashed the entire business. It was just a bit loose. Loose enough that I think she was able to work her head past it in the hunt for some seeds, but when she went to pull back, the plastic came with her and trapped her. I can only image what happened, and believe me, I wish I didn't have such a vivid, visually oriented brain.
The end result is that Stevie got a severe cut across the right side of her neck, deep enough that it opened her fragile crop, and in the process of trying to pull her head back she tore it open further and pulled the skin off the back of her neck.
There wasn't much blood, just a bit on the plastic and a single drop on her breast, right over her newly molted out, beautiful gray feathers.
It took me a moment of examining her to figure out what was going on, I assumed she had gotten a cut and somehow seeds had gotten stuck in her feathers, but when she moved her neck just a bit forward, I saw the holes and understood where the seeds had come from.
The side of the baby bird formula bag had a few stern words for me about crop health, but I wasn't prepared for this. My baby was hurt, and in a way that would be fatal to any animal I had ever owned. I couldn't see a vet till the morning (this happened Friday night, morning being Saturday the 14th) and I was freaking out.
I slept restlessly, and having just gotten over a bout with strep throat (don't sorry, Stevie only stuck her beak in my mouth and drank my water once, before I got the strep, and no she didn't give it to me. Kids, ask your parents why you shouldn't go to first base with a baby bird, ok?) I was alternately coughing and trying to hold in the sobbing that was making quite a beachhead in my chest.
Lots of vets won't see bird. I didn't know this. I assumed that a bird on their sign meant "Heck yeah! Bring your bird on down!" I was up this morning at 8, but didn't get to see a vet till 11. By then, Stevie had become lethargic and her wound began to smell septic. Lucky for me the exotics vet about 20 miles from my house had one appointment open, and they cleaned and disinfected my sweet birds horrible injury.
The doc didn't sugar coat it though. These sorts of things are tricky. Crops are made of some very thin skin, and it needs to stretch while also holding in food and water. Its a tall order, and when you break one, you are in a world of hurt. Some small injuries heal just fine on their own, some larger ones are literally stuck back together with super glue, but my sweetie had torn her crop from keel to crow and the doctor could only shrug and offer 60% odds and an $800 charge.
This is the part where I admit that I'm not made of money, and it suddenly came down to dollars vs. doves. Do I make a gamble at fixing my sweet girl, or do I feed my family, and pay the power bill.
Pragmatism, that contemptible bitch, won the day and I dropped Stevie off at the wonderful wildlife rescue center. The people there were professional, and while they handled Stevie a bit rougher than I would have liked, they talked competently about a plan for healing her wounds, re-socializing her with other doves, and eventually releasing her to the wild.
I miss my dove terribly. I know in my heart that keeping her in a cage would be the greatest disservice, and a lot of my plans included release. But, I want you to look in her face and tell me what plan survives this...
Narry a one.
I knew she needed to fly on her own, and at some point she would have just up and gone when the door was open, or when my back was turned and she could fish the keys out of my pocket, something. But like this? Oh god, the knowledge that I caused her so much suffering, that my efforts to rehabilitate her are resulting in a second, and possibly longer rehabilitation?
Your own worst enemy is your own brain when its dark, and quiet, and there isn't any peeping to distract you.
There was one last, slow, painful climb to my shoulder after the initial vet visit this morning, but it has been empty since. I'm a grown man, and I've been reduced to tears so heavy that I had to pull off the freeway and cry on the side of the road.
About a dove.
And I am not ashamed.
I miss you Stevie. Fly high sweetie.
Updated by squidflakes at Sun May 15, 2011 at 09:55 AM PDT
Update:
I truly appreciate all of the wonderful comments and the recommends. I woke up this morning in a much better state of mind, thinking clearer, and listening to the sound of doves cooing in the trees.