why my husband deserves the award for mother of the year

Mother's Day.  The day when moms all over the country are celebrated for their loving, nurturing, life-giving, compassionate traits.  All of these traits describe my dear husband on this Mother's Day.

A little backstory...the soffit and fascia blew off of our apartment building toward the end of the season last year.  Roofers were supposed to come out and fix it, but never really got around to it.  Winter came and went, spring arrived and some starlings decided it was the ideal place to build a nest.  Figuring it was better than a nest of bees and not having a ladder tall enough to get to it, we let it go.

On Sunday, Mother's Day, the roofers arrived.  We knew that there were babies up there.  We could hear them every time one of the parents flew up to feed them.  Figuring that they had about one more week to go before they could be out on their own, what could we do?

We were just about to head out for a family excursion when the hubster grabbed a box and went out to talk to the roofers.  He asked if they could put the baby birds in the box, but when they just looked at each other like Is this guy really serious? he asked if he could borrow their ladder and took matters into his own hands.  Now, my husband is only afraid of two things...bees and heights.  Fortunately we knew the bees were out of the equation this time, but not wanting to look squeamish in front of men who work these heights all the time, he took the box, valiantly climbed the ladder, and started pulling out nesting materials and baby birds. 

There was about 3 feet of nesting materials in there along with 5 babies.  They were almost fully-grown, had all of their feathers, but weren't quite ready to leave the nest yet.  He placed everything he could find, as well as the chicks, into the box and then wondered what the hell we were going to do with them.  He had saved them from the certain doom of the roofers, but now what?

We wanted the parents to be able to find them, so it had to be somewhere close, but not anywhere near the ground where they'd be instant food for the neighborhood cats.  Trees weren't secure enough, the roof too steep to put the little box on.  After some dwelling and brainstorming, he and our kid cleaned out a Rubbermaid bin, put it on our balcony and put the nesting contents and babies in it.  They'd be able to get out of it when it was time, but wouldn't be able to flee in a panic.  Hopefully it would be close enough to the original nest for the parents to find them.  We had our doubts and figured that in a couple of days we'd have 5 dead birds on our balcony, but at least we were trying.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little chicks all huddled in a corner.

And with that, we left on our excursion.

When we got back a few hours later, we saw the best thing possible:


Mama!

The parents had found their babies and were actively feeding them.  Seriously...very actively.  These things were so big, they were being fed whole worms, they just couldn't go get them themselves...and they were hungry!  We'd see one of the parents every 5-10 minutes or so, they'd hop in the box, drop off the worm, fly off to find another one and return.  I guess feeding a human baby once every few hours doesn't seem so bad anymore.

Yesterday one of them started getting bold and was trying to fly.  This is a very good thing!  These little babies might just make it after all thanks to my hubby's compassionate nature, quick thinking, and the fact that he didn't want me getting upset about someone killing baby birds on Mother's Day.  Oh, and the bird parents' instincts.  Okay - yay to all of them!

Now as long as we can keep them away from the dog, all should be golden.


Curiouser and curiouser...