(photograph © Kiwidutch)
We are at the gîte in France, surrounded by vines and general tranquility, and I’m resting in the shade when suddenly the children erupt into squeals of excitement.
Little Mr races into view from the courtyard babbling something only semi intelligible and drags Himself off frantically because apparently a rescue mission needs to be preformed. Urgently. NOW!
And a real rescue mission too, not like all the other ones that happen in his imagination and involve Lego buildings or Play mobile people.
Some minutes later he comes running back, so excited about disaster and needed rescue that he doesn’t know wither he should speak English or Dutch so I get a garbled melange of both… Since I can’t run quick to see what’s happening, the “happening” comes to me instead.
Himself arrives with Kiwi Daughter and she too is agitated… the reason for the agitation is that they spied a little bird sitting in the pebbles next to the car, and it seems to be in shock and severely confused.
Little Bird is now resting gently in the safety of Himself’s hand, and he and the children will be taking the bird out to the vines to give it a safe place to recover. We try to give it a little water first and to not upset it further.
The three of them head off with our little feathered friend and walk into the rows of vines where they later report that Himself set it gently free, and that it waits only a short time before making flying efforts across several rows of vines.
I’m sure there are farm cats around but at least out in the vines this little bird can hide out until he has recovered himself, whereas in the gîte courtyard he wouldn’t have lasted too long. The kids are high on the “drama” of the rescue for the rest of the afternoon, I think they even looked for more birds but of course there weren’t any (none that needed rescue at least).
We don’t know how of little friend faired after it’s trauma, …it’s not even clear why it got into the state it did anyway, personally it looks very young so I think it probably took a first flying lesson out of one of the trees in the courtyard and had a bit of a crash landing.
We wished it well and hope it survived.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
