Saving a baby bird

(this is a photo of mama bird)


On Thursday Alexa and Hayley discovered a baby bird which had apparently been blown out of its nest. I picked it up using a wal-mart bag and went to get the extension ladder. I was going to have Alexa climb up the ladder - it was very, very windy and I figured I would rather have her fall off of the ladder and get hurt, as opposed to Hayley. When it's your kid that gets hurt you don't
have to explain it to anyone. Alexa got scared and wouldn't climb the ladder. Who knew she would be scared of something? Anyway, Hayley climbed up the ladder. I told her to just gently dump the baby bird into the nest and bring the bag back down. Apparently she kinda freaked while she was up there - about 10 feet up - and dropped the bag and bird in the nest. She came back down and Alexa decided she would try to go up and get the bag. She got up there and freaked and wasn't able to get the bag; then Hayley tried again - same situation. I put the ladder away and we left because as Hayley was climbing down, the mama blue jay flew right at her to scare her away.

The girls went inside and I came back out to quietly watch to see if mama found her baby. She apparently couldn't quite find her - I think the bag was blocking the scent of the baby or scaring mama off or something....so......I drug the extension ladder back out. Let me insert here, that in addition to it being very windy, this is a tall skinny tree with no real branches against which to lean the ladder, and the ground is very uneven with no place to set it down. i had to be the one to hold the ladder because otherwise it wouldn't be stable.

The girls came back out and, I gave them an exam glove to handle the baby. Alexa tried again and freaked, then Hayley tried it. She swaggered up and demanded the glove and said she would handle it....all in typical Hayley fashion. Well she climbed up but she grabbed the entire bag, bird and all! Then she started climbing down. I told her to put the baby in the nest, she said she couldn't because she was freaking out, and continued downward. I yelled at her again, she kept moving down. Finally, I yelled at her in a rather mean voice and told her to go back up there and put the bird in there, and bring the bag down. Kind of the equivelent of a slap you would give someone who was hysterical. She did it and as soon as she was finished, she immediately stopped freaking out. I just hope the baby made it through the storms that followed that evening. I haven't seen it or mama since.