A day in the life of "dizzy"
by: Gail A. Lang (1995)

We'll start in my house. My 9 year-old found a baby bird in the road, just hatched that day by the looks of it. It was a very sad and pathetic little creature. I knew that it would not survive, but I attempted to care for it because it was so important to my little boys. After a couple of hours, I talked to them hoping they'd understand that we would not be able to save this baby. He was so young only his mother could care for him, and we had no way of returning him to her. They would not accept this idea and took the little bird, in its box that I had made, across the street to see if Wendy would try to save the poor little creature.

Now, we have to backtrack an hour or so to see what Wendy was doing while we'd been trying so hard to save this baby bird.

Wendy is younger than me, 26 perhaps, and has 2 children ages 3 and 6. She recently bought 2 canaries, a blue one, for 6 year-old Nick and a yellow one for 3 year-old Kelsy. Kelsy was taking a nap, and Nick was at my house trying to help with the baby bird. Meanwhile, Wendy decided to clean the bird cage a bit while Kelsy slept. She opened up the cage and let the birds fly around as she worked. Getting a bit hot, she turned on the ceiling fan. Oops! She forgot to put the birds up first! The yellow one flew right into it! HORROR! Whatever should Wendy do now? A logical person would have thrown the little thing in the trash and faced the children with the truth, but not Wendy!

She caught the blue canary and put it in the cage where it would be safe. Then she picked up the yellow one and tried to straighten its feathers and coax it back to life, or at least look like it was. She got frustrated trying to get the dead bird to stay on its perch so she called the pet store asking what she should do because her the bird kept falling off its perch! Of course, when they found out it was dead, they told her they couldn't be much help unless she wanted another one. Still, Wendy could not bring herself to admit to her little girl that she had killed the bird. So she kept trying desperately to get the bird to stay on the perch so that Kelsy wouldn't know. She left it in the bottom of the cage (with the blue one screaming frantically all the while) and went into her kitchen to see what she could find. "Those stupid bird store people, what do they know anyway?" she mumbled. She found some yellow twistee ties from a bread wrapper and returned to the cage. After several attempts and numerous ties the bird still kept falling into strange positions. (Gosh, I wonder why?) "OK", she thought, "This dead bird won't get the better of me!" On to the garage, there must be something there! Yes, she found the hot glue gun! And YES, she hot glued that poor little dead bird till it held a position that was acceptable to her!

About that time her big, brave 6'2" husband called home from work to say hi! Wendy spun her sad tale to dear John, hoping he would have an answer. He volunteered to leave work immediately and drop by the bird store for another yellow canary. Kelsy would never know. He told Wendy to cover the cage and tell Kelsy that the bird was asleep. (Not a very convincing story though with the blue one screaming about his dead companion!) Keep in mind that, for his giant size, John is terrified at even the sight of a bird -- no matter how small! How Wendy ever got away with buying 2 birds and keeping them is beyond me. Once when they got out while John was home, he ran for the closet, locked himself in and screamed for her to get those horrid things back into their cages... but he would be brave for his Kelsy. He would go and get another of those horrid things to keep her from being sad. When he got there and picked out a bird, he had them use an entire roll of tape to secure the box thoroughly so that the creature inside could not get out while he drove home. He even had them make a handle of tape so that he would not have to touch the box...... the lengths this brave soul would go to for his Kelsy! :)

So, now we're all caught up
..... John is coming home with a new bird
...... Wendy has killed and covered up Kelsy's yellow one
...... The boys are coming over to beg her to save this poor little baby bird
...... Kelsy wakes up

When Rex, Roy and Nick arrived with the baby bird, Wendy felt that she could make amends by saving this one. So, of course, she would try! First things first, it is a baby and is crying, so it must need food, right? Now what do birds eat? Bugs? No, she didn't care to go catch bugs to squish for this thing. Nuts? Yes, that's it. Birds eat nuts! But this is a baby bird, so she'd have to soften them for it. She got some pecans and put them in water. She boiled them and then smashed them into a soft (yet still hot) mush. Then she lovingly poked it down the poor little thing's throat. Well, the baby bird lived about 5 seconds after that!

Whatever should she do now? All the children were there in her kitchen and she had just killed yet another bird while they watched! She smiled and said "I think I've got it now, quick bring me another one, I'll save the next one!"

Enter husband hiding the horrid creature in it's box.