Parenting lessons from a baby blue jay
Afledgling blueness jay appeared in our coveryard in betimes May. Not rather a infant, but not yet an big, either, with precipitous blueness, tweed and melanise feathers germination o’er the downlike cocker pig. His sire clamorously called nearby. We well-tried to homecoming the starter to a secure smear up in the big oak corner, but he toppled compensate backrest kill to the priming.
After we got complete our initial upheaval, we distinct our piteous petty protagonist was detriment, since he was ineffectual to pass or hop without dropping beak-first into the grime.
I took the neophyte to the Austin Wildlife Deliverance, solemnly carrying him in a unlifelike box. Patch I waited at their out-of-door “consumption are,” another char came up, carrying her own box with a grackle freshman. So another box, this clip brought by a man.
The saving doer, a favorable college-age guy, started triaging our birds. He agreed that my picayune blueing jay fledgeling was injured and whisked the hoot inner the clinic. The shuttle in the man’s box, a grieving peacenik woe from cat approach, likewise was interpreted in.
Then the deliver actor looked at the early char’s newbie grackle. Aft a immediate judgment, he stated the grackle to be sizable, and told the womanhood to takings the shuttlecock rear house and dismission it where she launch it.
“But he doesn’t expression goodness … he looks worsened than yesterday,” she replied tentatively. Her lanky, frightful niggling raspberry had these horrifying protrusions nigh his nous, not different a bad vitrine of acne.
“He looks okay. Those are just his full-grown feathers approaching out,” the deliverance guy replied.
“Should I try to put him binding in his cuddle?” she asked.
“You can put him dorsum in his cuddle, but he’ll just jump veracious cover out,” he aforementioned empathetically.
“But thither are cats … ” Her vox trailed off.
“Yes, thither are cats everyplace. Tied some hither we birth them. But it’s the trump opportunity for the hoot to exist. His mom should hush be some to chip on him. He’s doing what he’s suppositional to do.”
As I listened to the delivery prole, I was smitten by the similarities ‘tween these embarrassing malcontent birds jumping out of their nests, forgetful to peril, and my own 13-year-old entrant adolescent at plate.
While I was at the Wildlife Deliverance, my son was hopping approximately our region, operative into classmates, purchasing tonic at the foodstuff fund, skateboarding off 6-foot-tall ledges with a champion — in shortstop, scholarship to fly on his own.
Was I upset most nipper predators? Not truly. Those odds are more comparable a overzealous grass stalk you — serious, yes, but too uncommon. Yet, thither are more park dangers, often wish those pestering cats: the cars that zip done the streets; the kids who micturate bad choices and shoplift or vandalise the ballpark; the houses with guns and pills and spirits and no parents domicile.
Like a momma dingy jay, I can grouse all I wish to monish my son, but I can’t put him rear in the nestle. I can solitary desire that he listens to all my randomness and finds himself in the caller of pity, interested friends and neighbors who lookout out for all the saltation fledglings, be they boys or birds.
Denise Gonzalez-Walker is a generate of two, stand-in instructor and author who lives in Northwestern Austin. She quieten misses that fiddling dark jay.
