{"id":144,"date":"2011-10-16T21:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T04:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/?p=144"},"modified":"2011-10-16T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T04:42:00","slug":"mickey-the-baby-pigeon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/16\/mickey-the-baby-pigeon\/","title":{"rendered":"Mickey the baby pigeon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"pidgy\"
\nThursday evening, we got a voicemail from a friend that said something like “Out walking… A little bird here. Wing is half gone. One of them is gone… thought I’d call you, but I know you don’t need this. Hope you’re well!” Funny call, and a tough situation. I was putting the ducks away at the time, but by the time I was back in the house, I also had an email. My friend had rescued the bird and placed it in a safe place. I offered to go pick it up and I assumed I’d have to have it euthanized.<\/p>\n

\"pidge\"
\nAs it turned out, the bird only looked injured. It’s actually a baby pigeon, and its wings haven’t fully grown in yet. It must have fallen from a nest too soon. I didn’t know how healthy it was, but there aren’t many places to take a baby pigeon, so I took it with me.<\/p>\n

\"pet\"
\nI stopped by the pet store in the morning and picked up some Kaytee Exact baby bird formula to feed it, and it came to work with me.* I fed the kid every few hours through the day, and by the end of the day, the bird perked up and became quite sassy and energetic. That’s a really good sign. But I hadn’t fed a baby pigeon before, so while I know I was getting it food safely, I could tell I wasn’t doing it very naturally. The baby pigeon kept looking at me like I was dumb. <\/p>\n

Then my good friend Jen told me that baby pigeons put their beaks way inside the mom’s beak to feed. I knew they ate regurgitated parent food, but I didn’t realize the moms didn’t put it in the baby’s beaks. It’s the other way around! I should have known from the size of that beak.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/code>
\nAfter that, I got a much better hang of how to feed baby Mickey. See? <\/p>\n

\"and\"
\nAnd Mickey stopped looking at me like I was clueless. S\/he actually looked very grateful. A little messy, but grateful.<\/p>\n

\"paws\"
\nLate Friday, another good friend, Peggy, told me that PAWS takes in rock doves (pigeons) in the off-season. They don’t have resources to take them in during the summer, but when it slows down in the fall, they accept them. I had no idea, since I’ve only ever volunteered there in the summer! So Saturday morning, we took little Mickey over to PAWS, with a donation, to finish rehabilitation there, with other pigeons. This greatly increases Mickey’s chances to do well in the wild, and s\/he will probably be released with other pigeons within a month.<\/p>\n

\"kid\"
\nGood luck, little kid! <\/p>\n

Special thanks to all the people who understand that every creature great and small matters. Even little baby pigeons deserve compassion and respect.<\/em><\/p>\n

*And by the way, to the delicate, passive-aggressive little flowers who whined to HR that a baby bird the size of a tennis ball, completely contained in a carrier by my desk for a few hours was a “dangerous wild animal,” you make my eyes roll so hard it hurts.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Thursday evening, we got a voicemail from a friend that said something like “Out walking… A little bird here. Wing is half gone. One of them is gone… thought I’d call you, but I know you don’t need this. Hope … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducksandclucks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}