Hi, feathered friends..
A few days ago, a little bird got stuck in my dad’s window. My dad was furious and wanted to hit it, but I pleaded with him, explaining it was just a small bird, and I wanted to keep it. My dad isn’t a fan of having a “soft spot for animals”, which is understandable since he comes from a family of hunters.
He is not the villain in this situation though, as you might imagine. He actually agreed with my decision. I felt eager, excited, and nervous all at once. I had never held a bird in my hand before except for poultry like chicken.
It felt so small, and I was scared of hurting it. I tried to avoid holding it too tightly and also not too loosely, so it wouldn’t slip out of my hand. I was such a novice, I had no idea what to do, so I just kept petting its head.
My dad quickly decided I couldn’t keep holding it like that, so he offered to find something to contain it for the main time. He took a sieve and cut a mosquito net to wrap around it, leaving an area that could be opened. While he worked on it, he told me a story about how he used to have a bird back in his hometown.
When he was done, he helped put the bird inside the sieve, I watched it jump from one spot to another. I thought about feeding it, but I didn’t have any seeds or bird food on hand. The only thing available was cooked spaghetti, I just assumed it could eat it, so I gave it a small strip of that.
Unfortunately, my internet was down that morning, so I couldn’t look up what to do. While I waited for the network to get better, I just watched the bird. At some point, it started chirping and I felt so excited. Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether it was getting comfortable or uncomfortable.
I had imagined having a chirping bird around me would be nice. I was even planning to take it with me to school when I resumed, assuming that a bird would be less stressful to care for at university.
After a while, I was still confused about what to do next. Since my internet chose to let me down, I took it as a sign and decided to let the bird go. It was a bird, after all, meant to fly and soar, not to be limited within confined spaces.
I went outside to release it. I wanted to hold it one last time before letting it go, to give it some ‘goodbye wishes’, but since I was so inexperienced, I couldn’t even take it out properly. It immediately escaped and flew away.
I felt a little sad that I didn’t get a proper goodbye moment and I didn’t even have a chance to take a picture. Since it was still a baby bird, I had hoped it could grow with me, and we could become buddies. :) But I think it was for the best.
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All images are mine. Thumbnail designed using Canva.
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Image taken by me, with my phone camera (Xr)
