The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Ode to Wellie (Part Two)

The days that followed the unfortunate hearing-aid incident (as it became known at the barn) were filled with ladders and ropes and tree climbing and metal detectors and hours and hours of walking around the area between the barn and walnut tree staring at the ground.

Photo by Jacqueline
I learned a lot in those few days, like, metal detectors usually detect lots of useless metal garbage.

I also learned that there are many places in a walnut tree for a bird to hide a hearing aid, and that oak leaves look just like flesh-colored hearing aids.

During the many hours Jacqueline and her family climbed trees, searched trees, shook trees, walked carefully round and round and round in circles staring at oak leaves and listened to the incessant beeping and buzzing of the metal detector.

Photo by Jacqueline
Wellie sat on their shoulders or climbed on their backs or sat in the next branch squawking loudly as if to say, “You guys are wasting your time. You’ll never find that hearing aid.”

As is turns out, Wellie was right. The hearing aid never turned up.

Wellie seemed to get sassier by the day.

I would take my dogs for walks past the barn and before she would hop on my shoulder and say hello, she would wait for me and dive past my head screeching her scrub jay cry as she flew past. She would also dive bomb the dogs and the cats and anything else that moved or breathed.

I started to warn people in the neighborhood about Wellie, especially people who were afraid of birds. The last thing I wanted was to have some unsuspecting human to take a swipe at Wellie out of shock or surprise.

I never realized that fear of birds was so common. It turns out I have three girlfriends with ornithophobia. The day after I told Jodi about Wellie, she called me and said that a scrub jay was sitting on her hot tub cover pestering her three little girls for food. She lived 1/8 of a mile from Jacqueline’s house.

Jacqueline and her family were gone for the day and Wellie must have been looking for them.

Or maybe she was just looking for a handout.

Photo by Jacqueline
I knew it had to be Wellie, and I knew that my friend was probably freaking out having the bird hovering over her and her daughters, so I walked over. She lives right around the corner.

My sons and I went over to Jodi’s house and there sat Wellie screaming, “Feed me. Feed me!” at her three young daughters. My son and I lured her back to our house.

I kept Wellie at our house as long as I could, and then off she went to find her human family.

After Wellie’s big adventure up to my part of the neighborhood, Jacqueline sent out an email warning the other unsuspecting souls who lived near this cheeky little bird.

Jacqueline started to receive calls as soon as the email went out from people sharing their “Wellie experiences.”

It seemed that Wellie had no fear of humans at all.

Wellie was giving our neighborhood sculptor, whose studio is located three doors away from Jacqueline’s house, regular visits. She would buzz around the sculptor and his assistants while they were welding and while engaged in other similarly dangerous activities.

Wellie would regularly fly into the some of the nearby neighbor’s houses and steal small trinkets.

Who knew that a little 3 oz. bird could wreak so much havoc on a whole neighborhood.

No one really seemed to mind. She could be so clever and fun and impudent and saucy and full of life.

But what made her so enjoyable would eventually be her downfall.

Do I speak Parseltongue?

Last May, a rattlesnake bit me.



Today I picked up my first snake since then.
 
I stepped from the side door of my garage (into the part of my garden I call the plant hospital—a place where dead and dying plants go to rest—my plant hospice, if you will).

My husband was standing outside the door; lips parted to ask me a question, instead something caught his eye. He looked down on the ground near my foot and he said “A snake.”

I am very proud of myself for not jumping like a cat and hanging by my fingernails from the gutter of the garage. Instead, I looked down at the small serpent, noticing that the coloring was oh so similar to a rattlesnake.

Keeping my frayed wits about me I looked a little further and noticed the head was not in the shape of a triangle.

“It’s a baby gopher snake.”

My husband let out the breath he was holding, while he conjured up the image of my giant blue leg and the rest of my body hooked up to the tubes and wires of the ICU.

Much to my own surprise, I reached down and picked up the little snake. And the little gopher snake let me pick him up.

Most gophersnakes, when they are frightened, will inflate their bodies, hiss loudly and shake their tails back and forth to imitate a rattlesnake. This little snake was very relaxed and docile. I held onto it for a few minutes, giving it a tour of my yard.

I brought it into my house.

Ode to Wellie, Part One.

Last 4th of July a friend of mine left my very fun, very crazy party and went home to feed her cats.

When she arrived home with her two kids and husband, she found that her cats had decided to make their own dinner, they had a small fuzzy baby scrub jay cornered in the window well.

The two sibling felines were just tucking their napkins into their laps when Jacqueline came to the little jay’s rescue.

Jacqueline has had much experience with taking in wild animals and domesticated animals and rescue animals and animals that lie somewhere in between. I could make a list of all the animals that have graced Jacqueline and her family’s doorway but that’s another story: that is Jacqueline’s story.

This is Welllie’s story.

photo by Jacqueline of Our Road Side Attraction
Wellie gets a lecture from Gerald after "the incident"

Wellie is short for Wellington; a name Jacqueline gave the little scrub jay in honor of the place in which she was rescued.

Jacqueline took the frightened little bird and tucked her away for the night in a flowerpot lined with a soft cloth inside a cage.

The next day Jacqueline hung up this little birdie hammock lined with alpaca wool in Wellie’s cage. It was reminiscent of her nest and she loved to lounge in it.

A couple days after my party coma had worn off, when my head stopped throbbing and my vision cleared, I came down to see Wellie, so cute and loud.

The first thing Jacqueline’s daughter showed me was how tame Wellie was—already. The bird had spent 95% of her short life with birds and here she was in the home of humans already perching on our fingers and yelling madly in our faces to feed her.

And so I fed her. I picked up a lump of gushy bird gruel and shoved it down her frantic birdie gullet and she noisily, happily gulped it down. I repeated this again and again until I thought she would pop.

How fun and rewarding it was to feed her. Something about the fact that she was wild made it that much more amusing.

Wellie first dined on chicken started crumble soaked in water and soon graduated onto everything. Some of her favorite meals included yogurt, fruit, pasta, toast and jam. Really for Wellie, it was all about the jam.

In Wellie’s eyes, toast was just a vehicle for the jam.

Her other favorite food turned out to be dog kibble, which she would routinely steal from Jacqueline’s boxer, Sadie.