blue jay day

Mr. Dinosaur Toes and I skipped out on church today like heathens and decided to go out to breakfast, go by the gem shop, and finally to JoAnn Fabrics. After breakfast, we took an accidental detour that put us about 30+ minutes out in the middle of nowhere, and while I was originally kinda ticked, I ended up being so grateful for that time we'd wasted, otherwise we wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time.

On our way out of Amherst and into Lynchburg, Chris gasped and slammed on the brakes. And then I saw it...a blue jay sitting in the middle of the road. He whipped the truck around and I told him to jump out in front of the oncoming car to scoop up the beautiful bird. We didn't see any signs of broken bones, only some trauma around the right eye. Being avid birders, we rushed to his office, lined a box with paper towels to make a little hole for it to sit in and went to the grocery store to get necessary supplies - unsalted peanuts, pedialyte, fresh berries and triple antibiotic ointment. While we've raised wild & domestic birds and understand the anatomy, we've not been trained in rehabilitation (although it's been on my to-do list for quite some time now). Luckily, I had a wildlife rehabilitator's number programmed on my cell phone, so I left a message and waited...

Any other time I hate that Mr. Dinosaur Toes is diabetic, but today it was actually a GOOD thing. He had an insulin syringe that hadn't been used, so we cut the needle off and dribbled pedialyte in the bird's mouth (which always makes me nervous because of the risk of aspiration pneumonia) so it wouldn't dehydrate. Shortly after, Gwen, the wildlife doc called and was more than happy to meet us and take the blue jay for care and rehabilitation.

We may not have gotten anything else done today, but if I can help just one bird, it makes me feel like I've accomplished something big, VERY BIG! Birds are my entire life, and like Mark Bittner said, "it's a heavenly thing to be allowed to touch a bird."