Free Bird

When I was in elementary school my family found a little Baltimore oriole in our yard that had been kicked out of the nest. The tree was too high to place the baby back in and the mother didn’t seem to want to care for it so we took the little bird in.

It’s hard to remember what we fed it at first. I think it was some kind of pablum. We fed the bird until it was old enough to eat regular bird seed. The bird became our pet and it lived in our basement perching on a wooden dowel laundry rack with newspaper under it.

The bird began to get stronger and friendlier. Eventually it would hop up the basement steps to greet us whenever we went downstairs, which was often. The little bird loved attention and hopped around the basement following us around. Before you think this was a dank, dark basement it wasn't. We had a big basement finished in concrete block with lights and windows and a door that went to the backyard. 

The bird was so sweet but we were never able to release it back into the wild. One day my mom was taking the laundry downstairs to go out the back door and hang it on the clothesline in our backyard. With the big round laundry basket held in front of her, my Mom did not see the little bird hop up to greet her and she stepped on it and broke its neck.

When I got home from school that day my Mom pulled me aside and told me what had happened. I cried and cried. She felt bad about it, too. Poor little bird rejected by its mother, killed by my mother. RIP.