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.
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.
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"
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.
When I first saw Wellie in her new home I thought she looked about as happy as any bird, wild or domesticated, I had ever seen. I thought that Wellie was home, that she should stay inside with this family forever. But as the days went by I changed my mind.
As Wellie grew—and now flew—with agility and ease about Jacqueline’s house, lighting on anything and stealing everything she could carry, I realized that she had outgrow this human home and although she still seemed happy she had grown much too big in spirit to stay.
Jacqueline it turns out, had come to the same conclusion.
A couple weeks after finding Wellie Jacqueline and her family did what they called a “soft release”. They let Wellie out of her cage and opened both their front and back sliding glass doors and then waited and watched.
I took a couple of days before Wellie ventured outside. Almost as soon as she went out, she came back in. Scrub Jays are members of the Corvid family, like crows. They are very smart. She knew where her bread was buttered—or jammed—at least.
Wellie ventured father and longer as the days went by. She never seemed to venture father than the horse barn next door.
I would come by and there would sit this brazen little bird on a branch or on a fence post. I could walk straight up to Wellie and put out my finger and she would hop right on. She would then move to my shoulder and shake me down for any jewelry.
Yes like crows, her cousins, Wellie was attracted to shinning objects, like eyes. You had to be careful when you looked her in the eyes. She really wanted to steel them, to peck them out and have them for her very own.
The whole thing was so Alfred Hitchcock.
I learned to wear my sunglasses around her, that way I could stare right at her without fear of having my peepers snatched from their sockets.
Wellie was indeed quite the thief. She was famous for it. She would steel things and then hide them in the cracks and crevices of her favorite old walnut tree.
At the barn next door, Jacqueline’s daughter takes horseback riding lessons from an old-English-gentlemen by the name of Gerald.
Gerald was slightly heavy-set with a couple of extra chins. He wore a tweed golf hat and barked commands at his young equestrian students in the most delightful English accent.
Gerald loved animals and was quite enchanted when Wellie landed on his shoulder and looked at him inquisitively. The enchantment was short-lived when Wellie reached into Gerald’s ear, plucked out his hearing aid and flew away.
The whole incident would have been really comical if not for the $1300 price tag of the hearing aid.
To be continued
This just in: hearing aid replacement cost: $2,000.
Ouch.
Thank you for sharing this story.
xo
Posted by: Jacqueline | October 06, 2010 at 08:35 AM