Since it failed to rain today, I decided to water my plants while feeding them a good mixture of miracle grow. I bought the stuff years ago but never really used it, so I was curious about how big my plants will actually turn out if I used the stuff. While watering one of the large planters I have in front yard, I came to notice something fleshy lying behind one of my sprouted dahlias. As I moved my dahlia, I came to notice that it was a baby bird with no feathers. It must have been less than a week old and fell out of its nest box which was probably a good 8-10 feet above my planter. I thought that it might have still been alive, but the poor thing was already dead by the time I found it. No bugs or anything were crawling on it, so I had to assume that it either fell out late in the evening last night or during the day today, and either died due to the fall or was already dead so the parents threw it out. Either way, it was kind of sad. I kept thinking to myself that, had I been more diligent in checking the area earlier, maybe I could have saved it, but what’s done is done.

I was on the phone with my mom when I found it and even she was a little saddened, and told me that I should bury it; so I did. I think that in the future, I’ll check around that area a little more often just in case another one accidentally falls out. For those of you that are unaware, you can return a bird to its nest if it’s fallen out. The idea that you can’t is just based off of an old wives’ tale people told so that their kids wouldn’t touch wild animals and possibly catch a disease or rabies. Besides, birds don’t really have a keen sense of smell like cats and dogs, so as long as the bird is from the same litter (age-wise) the bird would be none-the-wiser. I mean, how do you think we coined the term “bird-brain”, anyway?

I was going to take a picture of it too, but who likes to see pictures of dead baby animals?!? Sickos, that’s who. Oh well, it’s time to return to my essay writing. Just 1100 more words to go (and for those of you that are curious – this blog post alone is only 421 words long). Sigh…