Portrait of a Rehabber Through a Spouse's Eyes

She had that look in her brown eyes and that tone in her voice. Every husband learns the cues. If I had a major concern about my wife rehabbing I had better say it now because this was my only real opportunity to comment. We talked about the time, space and financial commitments of rehabbing and the benefits and sacrifices to our family. It sounded good to me, our five year-old son and four year-old daughter were jubilant at the prospect of songbirds in our home, and it was obvious this was very important to my wife. So I gave my nod and stood out of the way.

After work the following day I found all my clothes had been moved to the basement and my windowed, walk-in closet had been renamed “The Bird Room”. The kids thought it was absolutely amazing that birds would be living in my now barren closet and they danced in circles with voices echoing where pressed shirts once resided. In the backyard I found my wife in a swirl of sawdust. When the powder cleared and the roaring power tools stopped I saw the beginning of a small birdcage. She pulled back her safety goggles and said, “Isn’t it great? What do you think?” I realized quickly that function was going to be a priority over beauty. She was thrilled that her dream of caring for wildlife was taking shape. What else could I say, “It is marvelous!” and it was.

A few days later “The Room Formerly Known As The Closet”, as I chose to call it, was home to a couple of early-season orphaned starlings. They looked like characters from a Bella Lugosi film with tufts sticking out of their heads, lots of skin and big yellow beaks. I had pictured more aesthetically pleasing birds when we had talked about orphaned songbirds, but the new rehabber couldn’t have been happier. She fed, cleaned, and doted over these needy, homely creatures. Two birds weren’t too bad, though, and life at home stayed pretty normal.

Throughout the summer the neophyte rehabber pursued her dream diligently. She found an experienced rehabber to sponsor her for the state license and gave the game warden a tour of her facilities. By late-summer, with more classes under her belt and her state license in-hand, she started taking in baby robins, finches, and cardinals, and our home became filled with the sounds of outside as the orphaned birds grew. Daily life was accompanied by a periodic chorus of chirps and cheeps to let mom know someone upstairs was hungry followed by silence as the little creatures digested their meal. Our home started to take on the same rhythm - we planned events in 60 to 90 minute blocks so that we were back for the next feeding. My wife was having a ball, the kids enjoyed helping, and I was getting hooked. I wondered how next spring would be...

One of her first calls that spring was from Fort Belvoir where a vet tech had found a migrating cedar waxwing with coordination problems and blazing purple poops. After transporting him home, giving him an exam, and talking with her sponsor, my wife determined that the bird was not really injured. He was drunk on fermented berries and a little dehydrated and that he needed a night to sleep it off. One of the perks of being this close to wildlife is to see details you simply can’t see otherwise. As I was watching her care for him and remarking about his elegant color markings I noticed that the inside of the waxwings mouth was a brilliant orange-pink, coral color. I was amazed that the waxwing was just as beautiful internally as externally. He regained his composure the next morning and was released to complete his journey.

As spring progressed the volume of birds increased nearly exponentially. What had been a few birds every week turned into a few birds every day. My wife would call me at work to give me the warning we had agreed upon for particularly bad days which usually included 1) she had taken in “so many” birds, 2) the house was a mess, 3) dinner was not made, and 4) she had to go to her vet. These are the difficult times that every rehabber and family get through together. I assumed many of the household duties, the pizza deliveryman learned to find our home with his eyes closed, and we tried to keep everything in perspective. Yes, it was crazy, but also very exciting as these marvelous, needy creatures came to our door.

Our children learned the routine. Someone would knock on the door, they would race each other to see who could make it there first, and then find the WRL flyers and fridge magnets to give to the person transporting the bird. As my wife would open the box containing the bird, our kids would give the person the WRL information and wait dutifully. As would happen with children, their tact was inversely proportional to the concern of the transporter. Thus the woman with red-rimmed eyes, sincerely distressed about this bird that her cat had caught and mangled would be told definitively by my son, “It’s not going to make it,&38221; as he saw the shredded wing. Sadly that statement, although not often given, was usually correct. Rehabbing in our home is teaching our kids important lessons about life and death and the direct and indirect human influence on our native wildlife. The experience is shaping each of us.

One of the more curious facts I have yet to understand is how a nest of birds can be raised in rehab identically yet develop such distinct personalities and characteristics. The goal of rehab is to release a wild creature back into the wild so that it can survive naturally. Most birds that my wife releases properly fear humans by the time they are reintroduced; that is the goal. But occasionally one just doesn’t dislike us fast enough.

One such creature was a robin from a group of five. Raised together from the same nest, four of the five after release spent a few days around our area, eating worms in our yard before moving on. But number five simply wouldn’t go. He spent weeks with us. When I worked in our ground floor rec room with the sliding door open this robin would come in the room, hop around the table a few times, and leave. As time went on, he added a tour through my daughter’s Barbie Motorhome to his ritual. He never came close to me, but he was clearly not too afraid either. He developed an interest in our barbecue particularly when I would cook chicken. I’m not sure if he was hungry, or offended by the fact that I was cooking fowl, but he would land near me and exclaim repeatedly “chirp-CHIRP!” Mr. Personality, as I called him, liked to land on the heat pump outside the rec room window when I was working on the computer. It seems that he saw me through the window and came in for a visit . He would jump up and down, repeating his “chirp-CHIRP!” until I either left the room or went outside to talk to him. Finally he left us, as he should, but he was entertaining.

As we enter another rehab season I’m looking forward to seeing some of nature’s amazing creations as they touch our lives on their way to release. I wonder if we’ll release another statuesque bluebird, another defiant red-bellied woodpecker, another noble great crested flycatcher. I hope I don’t ever see another robin’s wing mangled by a cat or a bleeding carolina wren glued to rodent sticky trap her eyes darting in fear, each euthanized because they can never be released. I’ve learned that the worst injuries are caused by man and his minions, but I’ve also learned that many caring people can and do help. This spring will have its crazy times, for sure, but it is not only worth it, it is necessary. As my wife says, “the bird has its life and I have mine yet for a few days or even a few weeks we walk the same path together.”