Mother Nature & Me

Posted by SE Wagner May 22, 2017

Mother Nature & Me

If you know me, you know that while I'll ooh and ahh over cute baby animals, I am not an animal lover. But lately Mother Nature doesn't seem to care about that and keeps making me deal with dying baby animals...

Last week, I was pet sitting my grandma and cousin's animals while they were away and I'd brought Maggie over to play with the other two dogs, Bella and Ellie, so that they'd get some exercise. Well, while I was cleaning crap off the living room floor (don't know whose it was, doesn't really matter. Crap is crap), I hear this commotion in the backyard that sounds like every single bird in the neighborhood had suddenly gone crazy and they were all chirping and tweeting so loudly. I look outside and Maggie is trotting around with a bird in her mouth...so I finish cleaning up the crap off the floor and then go outside and start yelling at Maggie to drop it. She seems to think that this is a hilariously fun game, and every time she drops it and I tell her to leave it, she picks it back up and trots around the yard with it, just fast enough that I can't catch her. So I'm chasing this dog around my grandma's yard, yelling at her to drop this stupid bird, but I'm just making it worse because if she does drop it, as soon as I go near her to grab her collar and take her inside, she just picks it back up. So I decided to just wait on the porch until she either kills it or gets bored with it, because I couldn't leave without her and I was ready to go home. Eventually, she laid down and dropped the bird between her paws and kept vigil over it for a while, but it had stopped moving completely, so there wasn't really any fun in it anymore. At this point, I went inside and grabbed her leash and when she saw me come outside with the leash, she ran over (sans bird, thank goodness), eager to get in my car and go for a ride. I clipped her leash on and took her out to my car and then went back to the yard with a shovel to remove the (what I presumed was dead) bird outside the fenced-in part of the yard so that the dogs wouldn't eat it when I let them out again. So I start to shovel this bird onto the shovel and it's not moving at all, and then once I get most of its body, minus its neck and head, onto the shovel, it opens its one little eye and looks right at me. It was the most pathetic, heartbreaking thing ever. But I couldn't get the rest of its neck and head onto the shovel and I didn't want it flopping around while I carried it because that would just make it be in more pain, so I took one of the dogs' toys that was in the yard (ironically a duck) and tried to used this stuffed duck to push the bird's head onto the shovel but it wasn't working, so I abandoned the duck and used my hand to lift this pitiful little bird's head onto the shovel and took it over to a bush outside the fence and laid it under there to die. It was so sad. When I came back a couple hours later to feed the animals and let them out again, the bird was dead (with its one sad eye open, staring at nothing...)

Today, I was getting ready to go to AB's and DL's houses to drop off some books I'd borrowed and just as I was about to get in my car, I looked down and saw this little baby mouse, stock still, right near my tire. At first I was grossed out because I thought it was dead, but then I crouched down to get a better look and it moved a little bit. But I couldn't leave because if I reversed the car, I would run it over. So I got a stick and tried pushing it to the side, but I was still afraid I would run it over, so I ran inside and grabbed a box from the attic and put it in the box and started texting DL and AB about it and then told DL that I was bringing her the mouse. If you know DL, you know that she loves rodents, especially baby ones. I'm aware that most people don't want abandoned baby mice to take care of, but DL seemed like the best person to bring it to, so I pawned it off on her. She made it some tissue paper bedding and a couple hours later, I brought little Stewie (short for Stewart) some goat's milk (mice can't drink cow's milk) and DL graciously fed him with a syringe (although he just licked the milk off her hand). I hope he lives because he is absolutely adorable (and that's coming from someone who hates rodents). And goat's milk isn't as cheap as you'd expect it to be.

I guess pretty soon I won't be pawning off baby rodents to friends since I won't be living on a farm for much longer...as in, for a few more hours...so weird to think about!!