The Story of Gino(a)

Well, we were parents!....for about 5 or 6 days. It went like this:

On the day we were moving out of the empty mattress-on-the-floor house, we looked out the window and saw a baby bird hopping around in a futile effort to fly. He had something stuck to his foot and was obviously trying to escape it. Anyway, we caught him and helped untangle the string, etc from his foot. Then we tried to find where he had come from: Billy was climbing up on the roof looking for nearby nests and such. We couldn´t find any nests in the back, but we had previously recognized a nest in the front. We had seen the parents of that empty nest hanging around, so we decided to put our little orphan up there to see if he would be adopted. Well, not so much. The parents of that nest apparently didn´t appreciate the newcomer and basically attacked him. So....after feeling quite bad about putting our refugee into a deathtrap, WE decided to adopt him! We put him in a bucket nest and packed him along with the rest of our stuff to our new apartment.

Since we weren´t sure what adoptive human parents are supposed to feed a wild baby bird, we decided to try milk and baby veggie lasagna via syringe. The little guy definitely seemed hungry and was pecking excitedly for food. He suffered a few shots of milk to the face due to our lack of syringe-food-giving experience, but hey, we tried! After researching on the internet a bit, we found out we shouldn´t be giving him liquids, so we stuck to giving him veggie lasagna via spoon. Since the little guy/girl really seemed to like lasagna (as opposed to the higher-protein options we tried), we decided to give him the italian name of Gino(Gina if it was a girl).

Gino(a) was so freakin cute!! The little guy just could not be contained. It didn´t take him long to figure out how to escape his bucket-- the first time he did so he came hopping from our bedroom into the living room where we were hanging out. He obviously had decided to adopt us as parents, cuz he came right up to us and would hop into our hands, etc. In the mornings he would hop out of his bucket and jump around, chirping, to get us to wake up and feed him. One morning he jumped onto the bed and hopped right up into the nape of my neck. Ahhh... to be trusted and loved by a wild animal: not the worst feeling in the world!

Gino(a) also may have been a bit vain cuz he really liked to be clean and pretty. He would preen his feathers and even took a couple baths! We would put a little water on a plate and he would birdie-roll around in it. Honestly, one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

Now to the sad end: About 5 days after taking him home, we had to go to a training at work. When we got home several hours later, our birdie had flown :( ! The window in our bedroom was open, and although we thought it impossible for him to fly so early, apparently he suddenly developed the insight, or he climbed up the curtains and then jumped out the window. He left us a birdie poop by the window seal as a clue/goodbye. Gino(a) was tiny so we hope the best for his welfare! It appears the little guy/girl was just too much of an adventurer to be restrained--neither by his natural birdie nest nor our huge aparment human nest! We miss him, but are also proud of his spirit and boldness. And that, my friends, is the story of Gino(a).