Brianna had a fiber wafer this AM and got a surprise - the tooth we were waiting to have fall out any day finally did so. Its neighbor was just as wiggly and bleeding, so Brianna let me give it a gentle tug out as well - a real two-fer! She was a bit melancholy at loosing her teeth as seen in the video, but she cheered up just fine and we had a good day taking a motorcycle ride to Campbell Falls and playing in the water.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Maya's first exposure to death...
Yesterday we (Brianna, Maya, Chris) were driving down Rt. 8 to a party for Brianna's friend Emma. We saw a brightly colored bird behaving strangely on the breakdown lane. I stopped the car and backed up to a bird we later discovered was a juvenile Scarlet Tanager. I had never seen one before and both Victoria and I later agreed it was the most beautiful non-captive bird we had ever seen.
I had to direct traffic from the right lane into the left as when I first approached the bird it made a lame attempt at flying and ended up in the middle of the right lane. I herded it back to the breakdown lane and on my first attempt, caught it with a two handed cupping motion. It didn't struggle much, but seemed fairly lively except for a downy black feather stuck in its beak and black gunky stuff along both sides of its beak.
We stopped at a BK drive-thru for some lunch and waited in the bowling alley parking lot for the party to begin. While there I was able to coax the bird to drink some water from a bottle cap and I used a napkin and water to clean its beak. Maya and I got out of the car and caught a carpenter ant to feed to the bird, and after a few times worth of flicking it out of its mouth it finally ate it. We then left the car windows open, and as it was an overcast day in the low 70's we were unconcerned about heat for the bird. We put it in a BK bag on its side with the cap of water in there and the bag lightly folded over and the bird was fine when we left the party.
Driving home, the bird fluttered about in the bag and all seemed well until we got home and went to show the bird to Victoria, who was heading up a tag sale at our house. It had the strange curl of its toes that we knew was bad from when we tried to nurse Latka, our baby Blue Jay from two years back. It also would not stand and flapped limply. Within minutes it gave a strange arch to its back, as if taking one last great leap into flight and died in my hand.
Upon a brief examination and using deductive reasoning it seemed to have probably suffered a hit into a windshield, a glancing blow that gave it moderate internal injuries and some slight external bleeding. He probably picked at the external site and got his beak bloody and a feather stuck to his beak at that point, then regained enough strength to hop around dazed. After we picked him up he continued to slowly bleed internally until his death about three hours later.
Brianna said we should bury him and I agreed. Maya wanted to help. I dug a small hole and placed his little body into it and we explained to Maya that he was dead and his body did not work anymore. We told her his spirit was free now like an angel to go fly with other bird friends in heaven. She seemed cool with this and said bye bye Tiki (oh yes, she named him while we were at the bowling alley birthday party), then she used a child's hand shovel to gently put the first bit of dirt on him. Brianna and I finished with the dirt and then Maya produced a beautiful handkerchief she pilfered from the tag sale and she refused help as she carefully covered the grave with the handkerchief and placed stones on it to hold it in place. She then scampered off to play without a care.
Later on that evening, Brianna took a bowl of water and a spoon and said she was going out to do something for Tiki. I saw her sprinkling the water over the lawn with the spoon and I asked her if it was an offering for Tiki. She said yes, and that she hoped his friends would come visit. Kids can be so deep.
This morning Maya went to the back door and said to Victoria "Bird sleeping dirt." Victoria explained that yes, his body was sleeping forever.
I had to direct traffic from the right lane into the left as when I first approached the bird it made a lame attempt at flying and ended up in the middle of the right lane. I herded it back to the breakdown lane and on my first attempt, caught it with a two handed cupping motion. It didn't struggle much, but seemed fairly lively except for a downy black feather stuck in its beak and black gunky stuff along both sides of its beak.
We stopped at a BK drive-thru for some lunch and waited in the bowling alley parking lot for the party to begin. While there I was able to coax the bird to drink some water from a bottle cap and I used a napkin and water to clean its beak. Maya and I got out of the car and caught a carpenter ant to feed to the bird, and after a few times worth of flicking it out of its mouth it finally ate it. We then left the car windows open, and as it was an overcast day in the low 70's we were unconcerned about heat for the bird. We put it in a BK bag on its side with the cap of water in there and the bag lightly folded over and the bird was fine when we left the party.
Driving home, the bird fluttered about in the bag and all seemed well until we got home and went to show the bird to Victoria, who was heading up a tag sale at our house. It had the strange curl of its toes that we knew was bad from when we tried to nurse Latka, our baby Blue Jay from two years back. It also would not stand and flapped limply. Within minutes it gave a strange arch to its back, as if taking one last great leap into flight and died in my hand.
Upon a brief examination and using deductive reasoning it seemed to have probably suffered a hit into a windshield, a glancing blow that gave it moderate internal injuries and some slight external bleeding. He probably picked at the external site and got his beak bloody and a feather stuck to his beak at that point, then regained enough strength to hop around dazed. After we picked him up he continued to slowly bleed internally until his death about three hours later.
Brianna said we should bury him and I agreed. Maya wanted to help. I dug a small hole and placed his little body into it and we explained to Maya that he was dead and his body did not work anymore. We told her his spirit was free now like an angel to go fly with other bird friends in heaven. She seemed cool with this and said bye bye Tiki (oh yes, she named him while we were at the bowling alley birthday party), then she used a child's hand shovel to gently put the first bit of dirt on him. Brianna and I finished with the dirt and then Maya produced a beautiful handkerchief she pilfered from the tag sale and she refused help as she carefully covered the grave with the handkerchief and placed stones on it to hold it in place. She then scampered off to play without a care.
Later on that evening, Brianna took a bowl of water and a spoon and said she was going out to do something for Tiki. I saw her sprinkling the water over the lawn with the spoon and I asked her if it was an offering for Tiki. She said yes, and that she hoped his friends would come visit. Kids can be so deep.
This morning Maya went to the back door and said to Victoria "Bird sleeping dirt." Victoria explained that yes, his body was sleeping forever.
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