Today at work a little crow fledgling was just having the worst damn day. The little goober kept trying to shove its way into the door and screaming at its reflection while I was helping a lady look at a bed.
I pointed it out to her and together we regarded the infant screaming.
After she left my coworker came up and informed me there was a bird on her car. I went out to look and lo, the fledgling had scrambled up onto her windshield and was pecking forlornly at its reflection.
It stayed perched there in the hot sun, trying to move higher up the car with no success but too scared to fly down. She was agitated that it was on her car since she didn’t know if it would leave on its own.
“It’s a baby,” I told her, “It’s still learning how to fly.”
“That’s a baby?! It’s so big!”
“Yeah, it’s just a little guy.”
I went out to investigate. The parents began screaming and swooping. I placated them with crackers which they accepted without relenting their screaming. My coworker said she could now see that the creature on her car was indeed a baby with the sleek black parents swooshing angrily around in the air.
We regarded the baby together. After a while I started noticing it was showing signs of fatigue and distress. Mouth gaping but not begging for food, wings drooping. I went back out to check on it.
I was debating moving the baby; the day kept getting hotter and it didn’t have the energy or skill to relocate itself. My coworker also wanted the bird to stop pooping on her car. So eventually I announced, “I’m gonna move the bird.”
“Your gonna grab it? Aren’t you scared?”
I looked at her in bafflement. I grew up around every imaginable kind of fowl. The only bird I’d be scared of would be some of the big flightless ones. Even geese/swans are manageable if you just grab their necks before they really get flapping. The parents were not gonna go for my eyes like magpies and in general crows tend to recognize when you’re trying to help. “It’s just a little baby guy. It’s fine.”
I approached the baby amidst its parents shrieking crow obscenities down upon me. I scooped it gently like the burger.
I cannot begin to convey how soft that baby crow felt. It was the downiest most pleasant tactile thing that I’ve maybe ever held and the experience was only slightly marred by the goober trying ineffectually to bite me. It was stymied by the fact that it ain’t my first rodeo.
I brought it ten feet away to a nice shady tree. I held the baby gently so it could get its feet under it on the branch. It seemed a bit confused at this point but eventually gripped the branch and I stepped back and threw peanuts in self defense while the angry parents swooped showily around at me.
It stayed there pretty much the rest of the day. Its parents both checked in to make sure I hadn’t murdered it then flew back to where we could see a nest. So best theory is that this dingus was the first to start fledging and couldn’t actually return to the nest after launching.
I told my wife afterward and they went, “You. You touched the bird?!” My coworkers husband was also flabbergasted that I’d been brave enough to grab it. My coworker said she was just gonna shove it off her car with a broom.
As if they didn’t know who they married. As if I am not someone who would confidently help a stray cat or wrangle a chicken.
I informed them that barring gloves I had thoroughly washed my hands twice and it was worth it to get the silly infant off a slippery car and into the shade.
