Baby Ditch Bird #2

It still looks like it wants to kill me.

Well, the baby ditch bird is still alive. In fact, it's thriving, or at least getting a lot bigger. I feed it four times a day and it gets a chance to eat it's fill every time, which is likely more than it would get to eat if it was battling for food back in the nest. Watching it eat is truly terrifying and confirms any theories that you may have heard about birds being related to dinosaurs. Watch this video of it eating if you want to be scared. It recognizes me and hops out of the cage to eat when it sees a plate of food. When it's done, sometimes it even hops back into the cage, which it recognizes as it's nest. For a test I left the door of the cage open all afternoon and it didn't even try to come out until I showed up with food. It responds to my voice and looks at me when I'm in the kitchen, which is about as much affection as I expect to see from this vile creature. And speaking of vile, the bigger it gets the more it poops. Right out the side of the cage. It's lovely. My life has once again become about preparing special food for scheduled feedings and cleaning up poop. Around the house it's been suggested that this might be a sign that my life's calling is preparing special meals and cleaning up poop. I've checked into it, and I'm not particularly excited about any of the jobs that are described in those terms.
The bird has grown at a truly staggering rate in the last 10 days. It's probably tripled in weight. At this rate it will be as big as a chicken in another 10 days and as big as a turkey 10 days after that. Looking at the size of the adult birds that are still hanging around my yard, there might be a slight flaw in my growth extrapolation. The promising thing is that this rapid growth will hopefully lead to a rapid desire for the baby bird to walk around and become an outside bird. Right now it's working on the basic instinctual premise that if it moves much, it will fall out of the nest. Considering its past, that's probably a valid point, but it's got to get up and move eventually. It needs to learn to walk around, to fly, and to hunt for food. I know I can keep it alive as a baby, but do I have the ability to teach it to be a real functioning member of bird society? I guess we'll see.