Yesterday I left the house to go to Bingo and I saw our cat Sammy playing with something and I looked closer and it was a baby bird and it was dead. So I got to my car and had to go back into the house to get something and when I went back I noticed the little bird was alive!!! It was in the little flowerbed next to our porch and it it hopped into the corner and stood there. But I left it

OK, here's the thing, when I looked closer it had a bite through it's little wing and I figured our cat had mauled it too badly for it to survive. Then I was thinking how I would never be able to get it to the nest it came from. One of the trees in our front yard cannot be climed as it has no low branches. So if the bird came from a nest in that tree I'd never be able to get it up there. If it came from the other tree I might be able to find a nest but there are a bunch of nests up there so I'd never know which one it came from.

I thought of calling animal control but then figured they wouldn't even care about a baby bird. Don't they only care about strays and stuff like that or do they do animal rescue? I don't even know. But I decided to leave it because in the natural cycle of life, if our cat was a wild cat it would eat birds and rats and gophers and stuff like that. It's natural for cats to catch birds. It just is.

So I left for the day but I felt horrible for leaving the bird. I had all this justification in my head for why I did so, all of it totally reality based....I'd never get that bird into its nest, it looked too maimed and would die quickly anyway, animal control wouldn't give a crap about a baby bird, and it's the cycle of life. But all of that seemed irrelevant as I drove away with a heavy heart and a guilty concience

So this morning my Sister Natalie told me that my other Sister Alison found a baby bird that our cat had caught. I told her I saw that bird but thought it had no chance to survive because Sammy had bitten through it's wing into it's back. She told me my Sister Alison saw the bird was alive and she took it to a Bird Sanctuary and that they told her it would live!!

Thank you Alison!!!! I still feel like a complete heel, but now I feel so much better because my sister made it right I never knew we had a bird sanctuary nearby. Now I do! Future birdies, I won't leave you to the cat!

What would you have done in this situation? Am I totally evil? At least I felt bad!

i don't know. you can either intervene or let the course of nature do its thing. neither is a right or wrong answer, at least in this situation. of course, sometimes cats are too dumb to "finish the job", so sometimes it's best to do something when you know there's a little creature suffering as a result.

Tough call sweetie.

I wouldn't say you were EVIL at all. You evaluated the situation and felt you wouldn't have been any help.

What you can, and have done is learn from the situation. The lil birdies in your area have just gained a pretty powerful alli (sp?) I think

Anx said:

Well I could have crushed it under my foot and that would have ended its suffering for sure but then for sure I would be evil In this instance I really didn't know what to do. The nest = Never happen. I'm not tarzan ya know Animal control = "Hello, there is a tiny baby bird my cat caught"..... On the other end of the phone ..... Call us with something inmportant please *CLICK*

I was driven more that I didn't know what to do, not that I didn't want to or didn't care.

If there was no viable option, I would have let nature take it's course. I feel these things happen everyday and since I am not really knowledgeable of them, there isn't much I can do. I look at that situation as the tree making a sound in the forest, yet you happened to be there.

Since it was a baby bird, I might have taken it away from the cat. However, if it was a grown ass bird that had been shitting on my car, I would given the cat a saucer of milk as a reward for killing it.

Your response to this incident is probably the lock you needed to garantee you access to the express lane straight to hell.

Illustrator said:

If you think I'm evil it must be true!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Sorry, I'm still working on this little tidbit. You're not OLD, are you? Wow. Get off my lawn, kids!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

'Ey, if you get there before I do,
save me a seat, a'ight?

live4lust said:

Old enough to be some orgers dad, that's for sure I'm 37 You'd be surprised at how many younger people you'll find in those dens of sin, I mean places

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

don't worry, My hand basket is soaking in gasoline as we speak!

live4lust said:

It was the first thing I noticed in this thread! the bingo room is right next to the shuffle board on the Cruise ship!

I would have killed the cat..

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Aw, you're not evil.

When I was an animal control officer, we got those calls all the time. We couldn't handle wildlife, but we had the numbers of people who could. We were all animal lovers or we wouldn't have done that (tough) job, and none of us looked down on people who wanted to take care of any animal. Don't hesitate to call them if you have something like this happen again someday.

As for what I would have done, I know there are wildlife rescue groups, and I probably would have just called one right off the bat. If I were sure that the bird wasn't going to survive, I would consider humanely killing it (quickly snapping it's neck), but most people wouldn't be able to stomach that.

I don't think it's wrong to let an injured wild animal die naturally, though.

The only caveat I would place on that is that we have to take responsibility for our pets, and if they harm wildlife, that becomes our responsibility. Housecats killing birds isn't exactly "natural". Many wild birds are already threatened by civilization. Our pets are part of the problem. A tip: housecats should wear bells to help protect birds (though it probably wouldn't help a baby bird).

You're a sweetheart, Richard.

Nothinbutjoy said:

Well this is true! Now I know that there is such a thing as a bird sanctuary near us!

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Melissa, you don't know how I agonized over it

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Knowing you, I have some idea.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Seriously, my car could have burst into flames with me dying in a silver capsule and I would have thought I was getting what I deserved for leaving that bird

Seriously, I didn't think I really had good options

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Oh, you poor thing. You didn't know! It's ok!

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Well I definitely did accept that I didn't win jack shit at bingo because of this I'm trying to erase seeing the little thing hop into the corner and just standing there

I sent this email to my sister this morning:

OMG! OK, Natalie told me you took that little birdie to a bird
sanctuary!!! Is that true? If so, did they really tell you that the
bird was going to be OK?

Yesterday I left the house to go to Bingo and I saw Sammy playing with
something and I looked closer and it was that little bird. But it was
dead, or at least I thought it was. It wasn't even moving. Then I got
to my car and had to go back into the house to get something and when I
came back I noticed the little bird was alive!!! It was in the little
flowerbed on the side of mom's room and it hopped into the corner and
stood there : (

I feel so evil though because when I looked at it I saw it had a bite in
its wing and I left it for Sammy to kill. I figured there was no way I
could get it to the nest it came from. Like how do you find it? Then I
figured that Sammy had hurt the bird too bad and that it was too little
to live for very long. And I also figured that if Sammy was in the wild
and we didn't feed him cat food he would eat birds, and mice and gophers
and stuff. It's the natural circle of life. I also didn't think that
animal control would care about a baby bird.

But thank you for being such a saint! I felt bad about leaving it and I
only did that because I didn't think it had a chance at all. But thanks
to you, it will probably have a happy little life : )

HUGS!!!!


She replied with this:



.
[Edited 4/16/07 15:37pm]

OK, a couple things:

These little finches attack at the wienerschnitzel down the street One time my sister and I were down there and were eating lunch and my sister was talking and had a fry in her hand as she was talking and one of these birds swooped down and tried to snatch it out of her fingers!

Plus, I give probably an average of $100 a week to the homeless. Especially when I get paid I have no problem giving a $20 here, or a $10 there, $5 here, $4 there (usually goes down later in the week ) So I do care enough to help.

Why am I tripping again? Oh, because I have a bleeding heart!

Ok, you didnt like my advice

I was just kidding..

But I know how you must have felt Supa The other week we had a racing pigeon in our garden and he was shaking a bit and he wouldnt fly away, so we put some water out for him and some breadcrumbs, but then he went to hide behind the bins in some soft leaves.. when he came out it seemed that he had broken his wing.. it looked like maybe he had flown into a telephone wire or something.. we didnt know what to do, but he huddled back in a corner and after about 10 mins of deep breathing and shaking he died..

It is sad, I know, but its good that your lil birdie got better
[Edited 4/16/07 15:41pm]

REDFEATHERS said:

Aww poor thing!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Oh my gawd, are you trying to CONVINCE us that you're a good person?

'Cause, you know, we already get that.

You're so cute.

O.K., while we're confessing: I have a bird story, too, and I've been feeling bad for two years.

My sister and I were driving to Cleveland from Detroit. Two lane highway--I'm in the left lane with a car on the right of me and a car about 20 feet back behind me. Next thing I know, I'm coming right up fast on a group of birds feeding on road kill. And I can't move (to the left I'd go into a ditch, to the right I'd hit the car next to me), can't stop. So I honk, but they don't move--and I plowed right through the whole group. As did the car behind me. I still have nightmares about that drive.

Supa, I know how you feel. . .
[Edited 4/16/07 21:51pm]

Obviously, you don't watch the real life nature chanels. No problem, neither do I. Animals have a food supply, and generally it's other animals or prey.
I have good stories:
A friend has a ranch in South Africa in the TransVaal region. He photographed a hippo trying to help a dying water buck out of a lake. The waterbuck was injured, a puncture wound to it's chest and was dying.(probably from fighting with another male waterbuck) When animals bleed out they get thirsty and head for the nearest water. The waterbuck was dying in the water, and the hippo nudged him back to the bank, trying to help him. The photos are amazing. The buck died anyway.
Another hippo story and this is on youtube: a hippo encountered an alligator attaking an impala. Drove the alligator off and tried to get the impala to breathe again. It gently put it's mouth over the impala sucking the water out of its lungs.
Hippos do have a record for killing more humans than any other animal in Africa.

NuPwr319 said:

OMG!! !!!!!

I used to work at a mortuary and there were crows everywhere there and one time I came in the back way and was driving down the little streets in the cemetary and I saw a crow in the middle of the little street and did not slow down, figuring it would fly away, like all birds do and I got closer and closer and closer and by the time it was supposed to be flying away, I was running over it! I still feel bad about that.

xplnyrslf said:

The Hippo is one of my favorite animals on the planet!!!

My faves:

Elephants
Hippos
Ostrich
Octopus