Jinji, part one

A little before last Rosh Hashana I got a call from my niece Rivky (hi, Rivky). She had found a baby bird that couldn't fly. Whenever something like this happens in my family, I tend to be the go-to person. I went over and saw the little guy; Rivky and her friends had put him in an old fashioned cardboard egg crate and were happily trying to feed him milk. I explained that birds, not being the least bit mammalian, don't really have a taste for the stuff. Of course what we should have done was leave the poor little ball of feathers alone and let his momma come back and take care of him (baby birds fall out of nests all the time). I, of course, took him home.

So now I had Oscar and the new baby. For some reason I assumed he was a starling and went online to see how to care for baby starlings. Adapting what I found by googling, I whipped up a concoction of baby food beef and/or turkey and baby food apple sauce, with some birdie vitamins thrown in for good measure. I fed him with an eyedropper. He seemed to love it and he thrived. He was a genuine pain in the butt when he was little, chirping his fool head off between feedings...I had to keep running home from shul on Yom Kippur to feed him! But he had that so-ugly-he's-cute kind of adorableness that I couldn't resist. I worried how I would wean him off his formula and onto birdseed. There was always birdseed available for him in his cage and when he was ready, he figured it out. I stood there and marveled like a proud new daddy watching his kid take his first steps. Thinking that he might need some protein, I went to the local Petco and bought some live worms that are usually used for feeding lizards. Incidentally, this may be another reason I'm not really good at marriage, I guess. Women usually aren't too keen about sharing their domicile with bugs. I never quite figured out why. Actually, giving credit where credit is due, the one who came closest to putting up with this particular mishugas was Frenchi...kol hakavod! Anyway, I hand-fed him a few worms every day as a treat and he really seemed to love them, although I had to keep reminding him not to play with his food.

So why am I telling you all this? I'm trying to rationalize bringing another bird into the apartment when there was a very good chance that Oscar was making me seriously ill. The smart thing to do would have been to turn him over to a bird rehabilitator (yes, Virginia, there are bird rehabilitators!) so he could be reintroduced back into the wilds of Brooklyn and live out his birdy days doing birdy things with birdy friends. Would have been the more humane thing to do, too. At one point I actually called a rehabilitator who told me that I wasn't equipped to raise a baby bird. Well, la de da to you, too! Little did he know that by throwing down the gauntlet like that, he was sealing the little guy's fate...he was now officially part of the Z.A.F. (Zweig Avian Family) and would continue pooping up my apartment happily ever after. To be continued...