Thursday, April 19, 2012

Rescue sparrow: lessons learned

Yummy found another sparrow to rescue. It was being very loud and when she went to investigate she found a recently hatched sparrow on the ground. We couldn't find a nest in the nearby trees so the ugly little thing needed to be taken home. But what to feed it at 10:00 at night when all the pet stores are closed? Not everyone has an eyedropper lying around the house. Research indicated that it should be fed something high in protein. Hard cat or dog food softened to mush with milk or water was recommended. They also suggested cutting one end of a popsicle stick down to 1/8 of an inch to serve it up. Yummy wasn't able to get the cat food totally mushed, but it did become soft. She served it up on the blunt end of a shish kebob skewer. And the bird gobbled it right down. The people at the rescue where she dropped the birdie off yesterday morning said the milk was a bad idea. They say the baby bird's stomach is too sensitive for milk. But it has thus far lived through two nights indoors so something is going right.

I should mention how Yummy's conures reacted to her bringing in a baby sparrow. They heard the chirps and became very interested. They started acting differently. Almost paternal. They already feed each other. She felt that Rosie wanted to feed the sparrow. If she wasn't afraid that the sparrow might have some disease or parasite she would have given it over to the conures to care for.

The cat heard the sparrow and had to come investigate this new horror that had been introduced to the house. Upon meeting it face to face Seamus returned to his food dish.

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