First, a background story:
About two months ago I bought a couple of nice, big, healthy, fluffy ferns and hung them on the two corners of our front porch. They're a great addition to the facade of the house, and they definitely make it look inviting and homey.
About a month-and-a-half ago, just as birds started chirping happily as temperatures rose for Springtime's arrival, a momma and poppa bird decided one of the ferns would be transformed into a home and a nest was hastily--yet, might I add,
neatly (I was impressed with her tidy weaving technique and liked her minimalist decorating style)--constructed within the leaves of the fern. Then the very next day there were five eggs tucked right there in the center, so incredibly neat and cute and itty-bitty. And by
itty-bitty I mean
smaller around the middle than a dime. Tiny little things: white with little black speckles, like cracked black pepper. Before too long the eggs hatched and we were proud landlords to a family of seven.
Then the bird babies grew, ate, grew some more, ate some more, and eventually flew away... leaving my beautiful, fluffy fern a total limpy, dried-up poopfest with a sickly hole on one side where momma had entered and exited enough to break all the fern branches off. Boo, birds! Once the babies were gone I waited a whole day to be sure the new-to-flying birds wouldn't return to the nest before I grabbed some plastic knitting needles and dug that rotten poopy nest out of the plant, watered it like crazy, and began nursing it back to its happy, fluffy fern self. We're still on the road to recovery.
And now for the story of little Crouton....
About one week of peaceful fern doctoring took place before I discovered a new momma and a new poppa building a new nest... in the only happy, healthy, fluffy fern on the front porch that I had left! Ooooh, I was so mad! Please, birds, find this fern unsuitable and move a long! Alas, Momma and Poppa Finch deemed the fern sturdy and well-camouflaged... plus, it's in the best school district of the county and I think that was the selling point for Momma.
Repeat the whole build-nest-lay-eggs ordeal. But add an extra egg. This fern was definitely gonna be pooped to death by the time birdy rearing was over in a few weeks! I watched for a few days and slowly but surely the eggs hatched. Two hatched, then three more hatched... but the last egg didn't hatch for another two whole days. On the day it did hatch, I peeked into the fern to check on it (because I'm nosy like that and I was concerned!) and I noticed the egg had been pushed out of the nest and into the leaves of the fern. As I pulled the egg out of the leaves, I realized it was only half of an eggshell attached to the tiny bottom of the last-to-hatch baby bird.
"He must have fallen out of the nest as he pushed his way out of the shell," I thought to myself. I carefully put him back into the nest.
The next day I peeked into the fern and discovered that the baby bird was in the same exact spot again! Not in the nest, but under the leaves of the fern right next to the nest. Even though his other siblings were already growing (and he was still just as tiny), I decided to put him back into the nest and give it one last try. "He
must get a bug every now and then even if he is half the size of his fatty siblings!"
Welp, the next morning came along and I peeked in only to find... you guessed it... little bird baby in the fern leaves again. Poor little guy. He must have been deemed a "failure to thrive" hatchling since he hatched two whole days after all the others. He was too little to stand against the siblings when Momma came by to feed them. He just got kicked to the curb.
I just couldn't stomach the thought of these birds growing and flying away, and me digging out the nest with plastic needles only to find this tiny bird baby skeleton underneath. That would just be too much. So, my heart sank and by 9:00AM yesterday morning I had brought him inside.
I put a few knitted swatches (yes, hahaha, of course Trisha had knitting swatches just lying around) into an empty box that our last bank checks had been mailed in, set it up underneath a lamp, found a medicine dropper and some fruit juice and started nursing the pitiful little booger.
He settled in under the lamp and went up and down in chirping and eating quality. Sometimes his tummy would be empty but he wouldn't eat. Other times his belly would be full and he would chirp and eat like crazy. He bobbled his head around like a dummy, and I thought to myself, "well, maybe his mom really did know best after all."
But he ate, pooped, chirped, and slept.
Carlton and I found it incredibly funny that Vespa was so still when we let her look at him, although she constantly swallowed and licked her chops, and vibrated with tense excitement. We decided that the bird should be named "Crouton" because Vespa would totally love to crunch on his toasty little body.
He made it through the night, which neither Carlton nor I expected. Vespa woke up and needed to go out at about 4:30AM, and once we came back in I checked on him, fed him a few drops of juice, and left him to sleep some more. He was quite feisty.
This morning he was acting kinda dumb again. Flopping around, breathing sporadically, and overall just looking kinda floppy. But this afternoon I checked on him and fed him a few times. He was back to his spry, chirpy self again. So weird. But at 5:30... you guessed it... his head was floppy and he wouldn't eat.
And then when I checked on him at 7:00, not only was he not responsive at all, but he wasn't even pink anymore. He was just there, laying sorta sideways, and not breathing anymore. Crouton had died.
Of course I'm kinda sad, I was the one who rescued him from The Great Fern Entanglement. Carlton's kinda sad because, well, it was a tiny baby animal who just couldn't make it, and that's just plain sad.
But Vespa... oh, Vespa. She's just totally devastated. Inconsolable. When she came into the room to look for little Crouton, she didn't believe me when I explained the situation in terms she understands (usually pertaining to food), "All gone, Vespa. Da baby is alllllll gone." She ripped the check book box to shreds, turned all the knitted swatches over and over and over again, and whimpered for little Crouton. Which just makes the whole thing a even a bit more sad.
R.I.P. Crouton, May 10 - May 13
Let's all take a moment of silence.
