Charlyn’s Web

Directly across the lane from us is a five acre plot that no one lives on. The people that own it make improvements off and on and we carefully watch the goings on- you know, to keep an eye on the place for them (cough). Some people were over there working late last week so, being the thoughtful neighbors that we are, the kids and I walked over to check things out. There were large holes in the ground for the poles that would support their new garage/shop (at least, that’s what the building permit called it- just trying to be accurate here. You want us for neighbors, don’t you? We let our weeds go and we snoop.) We checked out what was in the holes and found a bunch of garbage.

There are cigarette butts, ear plugs and gloves down there. Eww.

Then the Girls said “There’s a bird in this one!”

Really?

Sure ‘nuf.

I have no idea how it got down in there but it couldn’t get out because the hole wasn’t big enough.

Here’s a closer look- it’s a Killdeer.

So being a innovative person, I stuck a stick down in there hoping that the bird would be able to use it to climb out. Maybe that should be “not to smart” person because it was a wild bird, not a trained parrot and so it did not use the stick in such a resourceful way. The bird and stick were still there when we checked on them after we got the mail.

I talked about the situation with my much more resourceful and innovative husband and he thought that using a rake to try and lift the bird out might work.

Unfortunately, I am not a good judge of size.

The rake would fit but didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver. I knocked some dirt down on the poor bird a few times. I could get the bird on the rake…

but it would hop right off. So we gave up and decided we’d have to wait for the true hero to arrive home from work. (photo credit: The Boy)

I had plans in town so I took off right after The Col. got home but the kids dragged him down to check out the bird. The bird continued to be unhelpful and wouldn’t stay on the smaller rake that The Col. used. The next idea was to lower a child head first, because there was no room to bend down if they went in feet first, into the hole, grab the bird and be pulled out by their strong father. They all chickened out. Pixie was held upside down but wouldn’t let go of his legs. So the bird was left there again.

All the long, cold night.

I prayed that it would somehow find it’s way out of the hole when I got home and found out it was still down there. I was half afraid that in the morning instead of finding a bird we’d find a coyote in the hole. Him, I was not going to rescue.

The Col. got up, and while it was still cold, he and The Boy trudged on out there again. I sent the camera with The Boy to capture photos of the great rescue. He took things like this-

and totally missed the Event. There was no coyote in the hole just the poor cold, hungry bird who finally gave up and stopped hopping off the rake and allowed himself to be brought up.

Rescue complete.