Birds. Part One

A week or two ago I went out to the barn to feed ponies and found a baby barn swallow in the barn aisle. I thought to myself, Well, this will never work, with Euripides the Cat hanging around. I made a movement towards the bird, and he scuttled under the stall doorway. Good, I thought, and proceeded to fill feed buckets with sweet feed for Socks and Turbo, who were nickering on the other side of the stall doorways.

Ponies fed, I went back into the cool of the house for a bit. About an hour later, I found myself back outdoors in the yard. I also found the wee little barn swallow, out in the middle of the yard. This will never work, I thought. I took my sunhat off and threw it over the baby bird. And then I gathered him up in the palm of my hand. He was cute! Off to the barn we went, back to his nest. (Note: we have many barn swallow nests in the barn, full of baby swallows, so I was making a guess that he fell out of the nest which was directly above him, when I first discovered hm. Hmmm...)

With my free hand I grabbed a ladder and set it under said nest. With bird in hand, I ambled up the ladder, noting just how high that old ca. 1887 barn ceiling was. Pretty high. Finally, I was at the top of the ladder, and I saw what I thought were the tail feathers of the mama swallow. I thought about what I was doing for...20 seconds? And I slowly lifted my baby-bird-filled hand over my head, and slipped the baby into the nest.

Uh- oh.

Have you ever watched any of the old Fantasia movie, where beautiful music plays while the Disney artists have depicted beautiful wildlife dancing and flitting and floating?

Well.

Picture this: a full nest of baby barn swallows all evacuating the safety of their nest when the human hand appears above them.

I deftly (so I thought) dropped the baby swallow into the nest, and there was an EXPLOSION of baby birds falling all around me. Including the one I had tried to rescue. I have never experienced anything like it.

I didn't mean to be their predator.

By the time I got down the ladder, Euripides the Cat had already caught some feline mental message that there was some sport to be had in the barn, and there he was: baby swallow in his mouth. I grabbed him by his scruff, and baby swallow fell out and escaped to beneath the stall doorway. Two others were hiding in the hay bales. I have no idea where the others ended up.

I gave up.

I took Euripides indoors with me for a couple of hours, and finally his meowing and grousing was too much: out he went. I decided it was Darwinian's survival of the fittest.