Super sized Series

 Bird Rescues

 
 
Lynn White and Jacko

Two poems by Lynn White

Jacko

I saw him flapping around in the grass,
one wing at an improbable angle.
I chased him,
caught him,
wrapped him 
carefully
in my cerise and navy school scarf.

Jack, jack, jacko..

Then it was a bus ride to the charity vet
who set the broken wing,
wrapped it
carefully
in plaster,
a heavy pot.
He was subdued on the bus home,
but still managed to greet my mother,

Jack, jack, jacko.

He perked up later after tea
and explored the living room
placing bits of straw artistically
and decorating them with pooh.
Which was why 
he had to live 
at school,
home 
only for weekends.

Jack, jack jacko!

But he enjoyed bus journeys now
and greeted all the passengers,
hopping from shoulder to shoulder,
waking them up with a wang from his pot,
nibbling an ear here and a nostril there.
Most were 
charmed,
but some 
were not.
He was close to becoming
the only jackdaw to be banned
from public transport.

Jack, jack, jacko!!

And then disaster!
the wing had not healed.
There was decay
and gangrene
amputation
and the trimming
of his lovely long feathers
to balance him.
No more hopping
from shoulder to shoulder,
well, maybe later
with practice!
But no more 
prospects of a wild life
for Jacko


Jack, jack, jacko...

And no more home with me
said my mum as the school holidays
loomed threateningly.

Jack, jack, jacko.....

But nearby the vet,
a budgie had died
and it’s owner,
bereaved,
had a need and
it was love at first sight
for both her and Jacko.

Jack, jack, jacko!!

There were photos 
in the press.
He was famous!
A local hero!

Jack, jack, jacko!!!

First published in Scarlet Leaf Review, May 2016



 

Valentino by Lynn White

It was February fourteenth and the nesting season
when they decided to clean the palm trees.
Two baby doves fell with the branches,
one already dead, one still living.

So Valentino survived
though naked and blind,
to be taken home and fed 
every twenty minutes of the day.
Strength was needed to open his beak
and a syringe to squirt in milk and mashed meat
doves not understanding 
that mouths need to be opened
before bellies can be filled.

So Valentino thrived
even growing spiky rudimentary feathers.
Thinking of his adolescence
we were concerned about the wild cats
who patrolled the gardens,
so we took him to the Parque Tropical
where baby eagles are reared.

There, we explained the predicament to Juan
who seemed to have heard such stories many times
and was clearly uninterested in a certainly dying dove.
And then
at the sound of voices
Valentino stood up in his box,
looking round with his still blind eyes
his huge belly now on show.

“Oooo gordo!!” said Juan.
“Si, come mucho,” I said.
“Oooo come mucho,” said Juan
to his colleagues now gathering round.
Juan picked him up
and right on cue
Valentino poohed.
“Oooo,” they all said
lost in admiration.
I fed him then
and he collapsed
in exhaustion as usual
which made them all laugh!
And so it was that he was taken to the Baby Station.

It was February fourteen
one year later. 
Two doves appeared in the baby palm
in our garden and stayed for a week.
We liked to think it was Valentino
coming back to introduce his partner!

It was February fourteen
one year later
when two doves again appeared
in the baby palm in our garden.

It was February fourteen
one year later…….

 

My Husband’s First Day Home after Open-heart Surgery  by Judith Waller Carroll

Our hip, urban son arrives 
with organic chicken, salmon, 
a bag of whole grain chips, a basket 

of blackberries, then returns to the car 
to fetch a Styrofoam container of mealy worms 
for the baby bird he totes in a shoe box. 

When he was little he rescued cats, dogs, 
a lizard with half its tail chewed off, 
other kids. His tender heart 

still going strong, he drops tiny 
pieces of crushed blackberries, half a worm
into the open beak, then carries the box
 
to his father, who struggles up 
on one elbow for a look at a fellow survivor. 
I want to freeze this moment: 

their two heads bent together, sweet concern 
on their faces, the bird and I
with our mouths open.

From Walking in Early September ( Finishing Line Press)

Two poems by Rachael Ikins

 

Stanley’s Big Adventure

One April our tuxedo cat startled my rescue
mynah bird, Stanley through the open 
slider door of the solar room.
A whole day that bird followed crows

across the street 
through leaves 
to the end of the block. 

Neighbors saw me in my nightgown, 
sick, running barefoot, calling him, 
his cage in my arms useless. One offered
birdseed on her windowsill. 

Though he flew to flock, no crows waited
for him. He was not theirs.
After four hours I cried to exhaustion, 

no dinner, 
the phone, 
another neighbor, listen! Yes,

I stood outside the kitchen door
among purple French lilacs, picked his voice
from the pool of late afternoon 
bird song. Called his name, as hoarse as he, 
an apple wedge offered on my palms
like prayer. He burst into the yard to land on my head,
his body shivering into
that nest of hair.

How small a life 
how large a love. 



Flight Lessons 

The first crow arrows northeast
 over 100 year old maples
 then a second, followed by a scattered 
murder two, four, five. Sunset. 
You don’t have to look at your watch 
you can count on the crows

One year crows filled a Norway maple 
outside the bedroom window.
In silence they gathered,
sacred making-room, 
a tree leafed-out glossy,
blue/black. 
At five a.m. 
startled our dreaming souls 
from our bodies 
when they shouted 
in one voice 
to raise the sun. 

That April when our tuxedo cat caught 
a fledgling as big as he was, 
carried it into the house. 
Parents screamed helplessness. We chased
Him upstairs.
You grabbed the cat,
with surgeon’s gentle fingers, 
checked the baby, climbed the ladder 
to the rooftop garden. 

One of us straddled the peak 
scooted as close to 
the infinite edge 
of childhood flinching 
while big black birds dive-bombed
until two hands opened 
like a trap 
like wings and 
baby hurtled toward the spruce trees, 
frantic family bumping him   mid air
until they vanished.

Maybe it was after rescue that they trusted our tree 
For night’s roost. Knew in collective corvid brain 
no men with guns here.

Days later awaiting moonrise on that roof 
feeling the exhalation of
day’s heat stroke our skin hair, I saw that fledgling—
flight lessons, 
two adult crows, offering advice. 
Baby threw himself into the wind, 
coasted long and slow deep into the hedge.
Mother on sidewalk as he flapped a storm 
of leaves and twigs, 
sharp as cats’ claws 
tight as a cats’s jaw
canine teeth, 
dug deep 

until he wrestled his life back
into the light. 
You said, he needs to get a drivers license. 
We laughed. The cat who once brought
a bird into the house slept on our bed.






 Our Lady of the Pigeons by Luanne Castle

Years ago, a young pigeon, probably adolescent, hopped about my porch.  He couldn't seem to fly. On closer examination, it seemed that his wings were bunched up on his back. As I peered through my glass door, a larger pigeon fluttered down to this smaller one, coaxing it into hiding behind the urn.  Then the older bird (mother? father? auntie?) flew off to its rain gutter perch and watched over the injured bird. 

I thought I understood. Every evening a brown falcon surveys the world from the gable above my bedroom.  The owl strikes in secret, so private that only three feathers are left. But I am not there when the birds-of-prey kill. I'm not a witness.

This particular pigeon circled dejectedly just a few feet from my house, not far from where I was writing at the computer. As I stepped outside, I spied one gray-furred feather on the doorstep. 

Looking at the bird, which was helpless to fly away, I sighed. We'd had such a pigeon problem at the house. My roof was covered with mottled gray feathers and mottled gray shit. In large quantities, pigeons can be so annoying. I'd read up on pigeons and discovered that they like to nest on rocky hillsides, and my tile roof probably seemed like the next best spot.

As I looked at the bird, I felt the heavy jacket of responsibility settling on me. I thought of the best work of Anonymous: Some days you’re the pigeon. Some days you’re the statue. I was pretty sure that at that point we both felt like the statue, heavy and cold.  And frightened.

After all, I had no idea how to help him.  He shivered. He bebopped. He looked as if
his arms might be caught in the jacket up above his head.

Without an idea of how to help him, but a strong sense that I couldn't turn my back and go inside, I decided to try to get help.  After calling several animal welfare and wildlife rescue organizations, I was told about a woman I've come to think of as Our Lady of the Pigeons.  Call her, the woman on the phone urged me. "She's the only one who will help a pigeon."

I put on rubber gloves to pick up the bird. I didn't want to pick up some kind of wild bird disease.
As a kid, when I brought feathers into the house, my mother would insist I throw them away and scrub my hands free of contamination. My husband lives by those rules, too, and I've picked up their worries.  I placed him in a box and covered it with a towel, all the while talking pigeon to him.  Pigeon is sort of like cat or dog.  It's a soothing sound which tells the pigeon or cat or dog that whatever you're going to do to them will be lovely.

My son held the box on his lap while I drove to the lady's house. She had sounded terse and difficult on the phone. She worried that a cat had pulled the wing off like they do a foot, leaving it bloodless, cauterized, and corked--a volatile champagne of death.

I parked my car under the orange tree and walked in through her open garage. A dog barked from out back, and I waited at the tattered screen door for what felt like an hour but was probably only two or three minutes. The pigeon's feet scratched the box floor every so often but was

We Hear a Squawking Sound by Sharon Waller Knutson

as we descend the steep
basement stairs carrying
a basket of clothes.

In the laundry room, a black
bird with a broken wing
sits in a box on a shelf
.
as our seventeen-year-old
six foot tall son stuffs sheets,
shirts and skivvies into the dryer.

He said he found the bird
lying on the grass and saved
it from his Border Collie.

None of us notice the black
kitten he’d also rescued
had followed us down

the stairs until we hear
the screech and see
the shelf fall to the floor, 

along with the terrified bird
and the pouncing kitten
and we perform a rescue.