Lisa and I went to a thrift store in Puyallup this morning. I picked up a rehab tank with a screen top for $4.95 and on the way out was able to put it to immediate use.
A young bird knocked itself out on the glass window front of the thrift store and fell to the floor upside down. I heard a human shriek (apparently an eyewitness to the collision) and spotted the poor thing lying there.
Someone on duty went for something to pick up the bird with, and came back with a huge snow shovel, so I immediately thought, “Nope, nope, nope! This creature isn’t dead yet and is not going into the trash can if I can help it,” so I went over and picked it up.
Immediately, Lisa explained to the store attendants, “Kris is a rehabber, does this all the time. Let Kris check it out.” I checked it out and felt it was just knocked unconscious and that it would recover (although I wasn’t 100% sure of it), so I said we would monitor the situation until we could determine it would be all right or that it would need temporary or lifetime care.
We paid for the stuff we bought, including the rehab tank, and Lisa put one of the towels she had just bought into the tank so I could set the bird on it while we watched and waited for it to sink or swim.
We placed our items in the rear end of my van, including the bird in the rehab tank, and then got into the front seats and sat there for about ten minutes. Then I took another look at the bird, and it seemed to be doing better, so I placed the rehab tank into the bushes just below where the bird’s flock was gathering, off and on, to eat suet from a hangar.
I put the tank there and got back into the van for about three minutes to see if the bird chatter would revive the bird more. When I checked on it again, it wasn’t yet standing or perching, but it was looking around and appeared “with it” and totally alert, so I checked its wings and feet and small body for any signs of blood. All looked good, so I lifted the bird out of the rehab tank and held it (open-handed) near a branch of the tree, hoping it would step onto it.
After just a few seconds, it decided it was quite well, thank you very much, and flew off across the parking lot, probably in search of less hard air and for a less-people-y perching place.
So my new rehab tank has been tried, tested, and blessed with its first small miracle. Lisa and I were both happy about that!
Sadly, we didn’t think to document any of this on our cameras. We were too busy thinking of the bird and its situation to think about documenting the event. Oh, well!
All’s well that ends well!
