Sunday, March 20, 2011


After twenty years of doing orphaned wildlife rehabilitation the death of an infant you have held, bottle fed, held to your chest to warm, never gets any easier. The ones like this are the hardest. When I see them eagerly clutching for milk and see they sheen of health on their skin. Then with baby formula in hand you open the box and see the lifeless body that only the night before was thriving. It hurts.

The release site was already picked out. The bird rehabber that gave me these has a lake behind their center. I could go every day and lay out food until she learned to fend for her self. In my mind, I saw her walking along that lake and living the life she was born to. So today, the joy in what I do is gone. Yes, my room is full of the others. But for today, she is gone and her life is the one that matters.

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