An Adoption Story

As I have written before, I drive once a week for Wildlife Rehab and Release, a volunteer organization that rescues injured or orphaned local wild animals. Tuesday evenings is my day, and I had to drive a fledgling robin (adorable!), a couple of sparrows (one shouted from inside his box the entire trip) and some mallard ducklings. The place that took the ducklings had a pen with an assortment of chickens in it – I don’t know if they were rescued chickens or just acquired at random, but there were about six, no two the same breed. There was a magnificent red rooster that was the very image of a painting of a rooster I bought – in Thailand! I have also mentioned before that I like chickens, right? And that I had a quilt made of chicken-themed fabric collected over about two years? And that I’m running a contest to give away the leftover fabric, about two pounds of it? Tell me in twenty-five words or less why you think you should be the happy recipient of the fabric. Contest ends July 31. Contact me through my web site: Monica-Ferris.com.

The ducklings are orphans and at the home I took them to, there is a mallard female who will adopt them. She is herself a rescue, came in injured, starving, and confused early this spring. She had to be force-fed, as she was so far down the road to death she had stopped eating. About the time she began to realize her life wasn’t over after all, another mallard with four ducklings was brought in, so severely injured (struck by a car) she had to be euthanized. One of the ducklings was injured and died. In the rescue room at the Humane Society, Laura heard the desperate cheeping of the newly-orphaned ducklings, and saw the sad, confused mallard and put them together in a bigger cage. The adult pecked half-heartedly at one of the ducklings but then left them alone. They, on the other hand, crowded around her. When Laura came in the next day, one was perched on her back and the other two were under her wings. The mallard now has fifteen (FIFTEEN!) adopted ducklings of various ages. She cares for them all, and they cluster around her when she calls. I brought her three more Tuesday evening. This is not something that would happen in the wild; free adults don’t expend energy on any but their own offspring. Is she still confused, living in a strange new world whose rules she cannot understand? Or is she just big-hearted? Whichever, when the ducklings become ducks, they and their adoptive mother will be set free. And we are grateful. And charmed.

I failed to post last week because my computer and I were in Ft. Myers, Florida, in a "gated community" that has free wireless connections. But when I told my computer to listen for the connection, it muttered the computer equivalent of "I don’t hear nothin’" and so I missed my chance. I had taken my mother to Florida to live with my sister Dolores and her daughter Reggie. Mom is confined to a wheelchair nowadays and is not always firmly in touch with reality, so I was expecting a nightmare journey. Instead, it went very smoothly. The airlines are all up to speed on this sort of passenger, and handled Mom with efficient kindness. The only minor glitch came when we were deplaning in Ft. Myers and the wheeled chair they took her off the plane on was a little low and she could not rise out of it. A wonderful and powerful man bent over her and told her to put her arms around his neck. She did, and he straightened, lifting her easily. "Now, don’t go blowing in my ear," he teased, to her delight. Mom will be 90 in November.