Mix It Up Monday: A Sweet Little Visitor

Happy Monday. We had a little visitor this weekend. Benny and the girls were swimming in the river Saturday when a sweet little baby dove bird came struggling towards them. It was obvious she was drowning, her wings completely soaked, unable to lift herself out of the water. We’re not sure where she can from, but we scooped her up and put her in a crate (a cat carrier of all things) until she could dry out and get her bearings. We could tell she was quite young, her wings appearing not fully developed. We lined the carrier with newspaper and gave her some birdseed and water.

For the first couple hours, she just sat there, shell-shocked. We weren’t sure she was going to make it at all. After a while, she started moving around a little bit and eventually started picking at the birdseed. Before going to bed Saturday, we tucked her in, covering the crate with a towel so Tink and Savannah wouldn’t bother her. By midday Sunday, she had eaten more, dumped her water bowl and was standing on top of it like a throne, and had pooped (always a good sign, right!?). We decided maybe she was ready to go.

Benny took her outside and sat her on a post covered with shrubbery in the front yard. And there she sat, just looking at us like she was saying, “What the heck do you want me to do now?” I had a basic 50mm lens on my camera for this shot, so you can see I was very close to her when I took it. She let me take as many pictures as I wanted, and then when we backed up a bit, she hopped down from the post and walked around a bit under the shrubbery, still very close to us. Soon, she started preening, stretching out her little wings and cleaning them. We sprinkled some birdseed there under the shrubs and put a little bowl of water in there and decided we’d come back and check on her in a bit.

A little while later, Benny went back out to check on her. As if she were waiting for him, she hopped back up on the post we had placed her on, looked at him for a moment, as if saying thank you, and then took flight, flying up into a nearby pine tree…as far as we were concerned, her first flight. Hopefully she’ll hang around and look in us from time to time. Any little visitors like this ever come your way?

Update: Lucky for me, this week's Texture Tuesday challenge over at Kim Klassen's blog is to use words along with one of Kim's textures.  This picture just happens to fit that bill! :-)