I was obsessed with birds when I was a kid. Really obsessed. For a very long time it hurt me at a very deep level that I wasn't a Disney princess. If I were, I could sing, spread my arms wide and be covered from head to toe with feathery admirers. But I could not tempt them to me with my voice or charm, so I started to hunt for the young, weak and distracted of their kind to catch.
I was seven years old the first time I captured a bird. It was the day my niece Steph was born, and since Mom was in Missoula to be with Renae, I was left home under the supervision of my father. He didn't mind me "wandering" around town by myself like Mom did, and that meant a wonderful opportunity to hunt down birds.
If you've ever tried to sneak up on a bird, any healthy bird, you know just how hard it is to do. They are VERY aware of anything moving their direction with entrapment in mind. I've watched my cats attempt it throughout the years. Even when they move super slow crouched as low to the ground with sudden spring attack maneuvering, cats still miss most of the time. A seven year old human girl trying to make a sneak attack on a bird has little to no chance. I still was not dissuaded from trying, however.
I remember seeing a big black crow in the church yard kitty corner to our house. He looked so soft and shiny and I wanted to TOUCH him. And love him. And name him. And find out if he was a bird I could teach to talk. I did my usual nonchalant walk towards him, hoping he'd think I didn't even see him there. I'm pretty sure a hunting seven year old feigning disinterest had to have the total opposite effect to anyone with a brain, even a bird brain. Even though I had used this ingenious trap of disinterest many times though out the years with no success, it was still usually the first thing I would pull out of my bird catching repertoire. The only other "trick" up my sleeve was full on charge as fast as I could, hoping just this once I would be faster than the bird. Neither charging or sneaking had really paid off anyway, but at least the birds seemed to stick around a little longer with the whole sneaking process.
Something was wrong with the bird. For some reason he didn't flutter a feather as I walked passed him feigning disinterest. So I made another pass by him, only a little closer. No response. Discarding disinterest, I did what I really wanted to do, which was rush over and touch him. He regarded me with his little birdy eye, but didn't move. That's when I decided I was a new pet owner. I scooped him up and took him home, found an old box, put a blanket in the bottom and walla!: A new bird habitat, created just like that.
I can't remember what I named my little bird, but I do know he received buckets of love those first few hours. I wrapped him up in his little blanket, and he became my little bird baby. After a couple hours, it was time to come inside to eat lunch, so I put the bird in his box, closed the top and went inside to eat. When I came back out, he had escaped! I totally hadn't expected that, as he'd been nearly comatose the whole time I'd been loving him. In retrospect I suspect maybe an older brother or father of mine had tried to help the little guy out, but I have no proof of that. Anyway, as soon as I found my pet had somehow escaped, it was my top priority to find him.
I had a strong suspicion that I needed to return to where I had found him in the first place. I sleuthed through the church yard, looked through the tall trees. I opened up the outhouse and looked inside. I looked under the porch. I walked up and down the streets, looking into neighbor's yard, hoping to see a very still black bird. Completely dejected, I made my way home, no bird in hand. As I walked into I yard, I saw some movement over by our garage. There he was! Only, to my dismay, there was an awareness to those eyes that hadn't been there before.
I slowly moved toward him, recognizing from years of experience that look of mistrust that precedes flight. He didn't fly away though. Instead he seemed to be backing away slowly, as if he understood any sudden moves on his part would provoke my charging him. I started moving slightly faster, and he sped up as well, locked in a terrible dance with a human girl whose love was bound to kill him. Finally unable to hold back, I sprang forward and tried to grab him. He took off at full speed, running out of our yard, across the road, with me hot on his tail. It was close!!! Closer than any chase I'd ever had with a bird! Fortunately for him (and sadly for me) he manged to dive under the outhouse building. It was probably the one place I wouldn't have pursued him. I waited for him to come out until it started to get too dark, and then I went home, defeated.
That wasn't the only time I tried to make a pet out of a wild bird. There were lots of baby birds I tried to save, found on the road, either blown out of their nests or kicked out prematurely by their parents. Lots of midnight feedings of squished worms and bread. I would keep them alive for a long time. One of my birds even grew all of his feathers and seemed to be doing fine before he died. They all eventually would die. My parents always tried to warn me- wild animals just don't do well in captivity. I gave up on trying to save baby birds, it was just to sad to lose them.
Then one day someone told me that it is possible to teach a magpie to talk. That idea stuck in my head. I pondered on it, mulled it over. My secret wish had always been to have a parrot that could talk, but the chances of ever being able to buy a parrot were slim to none. But a magpie? Well, magpies are FREE, thousands of them, free for the taking. But there was that little 'hard to catch a bird' problem that I had been struggling with for YEARS. Then I had a really brilliant idea: I would follow some parent magpies back to their nest, find one with eggs or babies, let the parents do all the hard work of actually raising the babies, and then I would swoop in at the last minute and birdnap me a new, might-talk-someday bird.
I was probably around 9 by that time, and I'd had free run of Paradise for awhile. I spent most of my time exploring the mountains, the river banks, walking pretty much where ever I wanted to. It didn't take me too long to track down a magpie nest. Everyday after school, I'd walk down a dirt road that went to a place we called 'Oliver's Pond', and about half way to the pond I'd cut into the thick bushes and climb the small prickly tree my baby bird was being raised in. I'd peek in on the babies, see how big they were getting, and leave without touching anything. I didn't want to spook their parents, after all. I did that for weeks.
Unfortunately, I seemed to get strep throat at least once or twice a year in those days, and this happened to be one of those times. The babies were already getting pretty big when I got sick, and I was in bed for at least a week. The minute I got out of school after finally going back, I was racing down that dirt road to check on my bird. And you guessed it, the babies were all gone. All that stalking, all of my plans, down the the drain. I was heartbroke. I gave up on my dream of having a talking magpie.
I still loved birds though. It seemed like every summer we'd have at least a couple of robins would run into our kitchen window and knock themselves koo-koo. They were always fairly easy to catch if the crash didn't do them in. My dad told me that they'd been eating fermented raspberries, and that's why they crashed into our windows.
I had to find these berries! I imagined magical berries bushes with flocks of intoxicated birds, ripe for catching. I looked up and down the alley ways of Paradise, and eventually found some bushes in an alley not too far from my grandpa's house. I ate a lot of the berries myself, and they tasted fine. It wasn't quite late enough into the summer for a lot of the berries to have fermented. Still, I checked on those bushes fairly frequently after that. I never did find the flocks I'd been hoping for, but I would find a drunk little robin once in awhile who'd be easy to catch. After I realised that I would always have another opportunity to catch a bird and hold it as long as I knew where an over-ripe raspberry bush was, I didn't feel quite so frantic about keeping a wild bird for a pet. I became a 'catch and release for all things wild' believer.
Eventually, my brother and I saved enough money up to buy a really nice bird cage, and two zebra finches. We loved those (tame!) birds. I would clip their wings (yeah, I know it sounds just wrong for a 10 year old to do that, but I was very careful and it was VERY effective at keeping them from flying away from me), and hold them for hours. We had a male and a female, so we bought them a nest and then we had lots of baby birds. I'd clip all of their wings too, and hold them all. We even donated two of the birds to our school, and we'd hold them during class. Eventually we had a LOT of birds, so we started selling them to pet stores for a small profit.
I still love birds, but I have a big fat cat who would love nothing more than for me to pick him up a feathery snack. I also have little girl running around here these days who talks non-stop about dogs. I see a very kindred spirit in that girl; she WILL get a dog. One thing that life has taught me over and over, even with something as small as being a creepy bird stalker, is that if you want something bad enough, think about it enough, and talk about it enough, eventually you will get it.
