Baby Ditch Bird #3

Raising a wild animal in your house is a little like visiting a foreign country. Talking to the guy working at the gas station isn't like visiting Pakistan. (I'm not being a generalist here, the gas station up the road really is run by a very nice family from Pakistan) You learn about their behaviors, their mannerisms, their sounds and movements, in a way that you can't when you observe them in the wild. When I walk outside I can tell if the ditch birds in the nests are hungry or content just by listening to them. I can see them flip their wings forward in a defensive posture and know that their parent must have just hurled up a treat in the nest and they're boxing out their siblings. I know that they flare their bottom jaw when they're really mad, right before they strike. I also know about how far they can reach. So does the dog. They also show affection with gently bites, very soft, almost playful. They're not super social, but they don't like being alone either. When out of the nest they'll skootch across the lawn to get next to me or the dog or anyone familiar. Between me and the nest though, they always choose the nest, coming out just to eat and then hustling back in to a place of safety. There's no reason to lock or even close the cage that the bird calls home, it won't leave.

Stay

I was discussing that fact with my sister the other day. That little bird won't leave it's nest except to eat, and only then because I don't feed it inside to avoid the mess. This makes sense, if you wander, you fall out of the nest and die. Wandering is bad. I've been taking advantage of this instinct during the day when I need to clean things up or just when I think the bird needs to be outside. I take it out and set it on the cross brace of our swing set and I never have to worry. Twenty minutes? Still there. Two hours? Still there. Five hours? Yup, still there. It will not move. Oh, it sits up and sits down and preens itself and watches the world go by, but it never ever goes any where. This is amazingly convenient and is something that I think we might need to genetically engineer into human children. When they're toddlers we need to give them the instinct to stay in one spot if they're more than about 2 feet off the ground. Then we can build concrete stumps into convenient locations and we won't have to worry about them. Have to use the bathroom? Set them on the stump. Changing room? Stump. Need to talk to the mechanic and not have to worry about anyone falling into the oil change pit? That's why they installed the stump. It would be perfect. Of course, we'd have to figure out some way to guarantee that only a parent could pick them up from the stump, so the plan's not perfect, but it has promise. We'd have to be careful and not accidentally engineer in any traits that we didn't want. Things like feathers and beaks are obvious, but I'm thinking more about chewing. I don't mind preparing mushy food and spoon feeding a baby, but I have to think that masticating a hot dog for your teenager and spitting it on his plate to eat would cancel out that whole stump thing.