Shanna Personal Choice 2 Tweeter

It was a dark and stormy April evening when my mother went in the garage only to be perplexed by a quiet tweet-tweetery sound. She glanced around and there, just inside the garage laying pitifully on the concrete was a bitty baby bird. He would soon be named Tweeter. He was just a fur ball no bigger than a chick. It was a windy night so we figure he must have blown out of his nest. His legs were too long for his tiny body which made walking impossible, much less flying. As he grew he developed puffy eyebrows, brown feathers, and a beige, brown-speckled breast. We found out he is a brown Thrasher, non-migratory, has one of the widest repetoirs of music, and is indistinguishable as to sex. He finally taught himself how to fly, first fluttering his wings as he perched on a moving finger. Soon he lost his eyebrows, gained whiskers around his beak, and was flying all around the house. He no longer had to be fed mushy cat food with tweezers, which is ironically the correct way to feed a baby bird. After we'd had him a month or two and he could fly and eat for himself, we decided to let him go. With tears in our eyes we took the cage on the backporch and opened the door. He hopped out, fluttered around the porch for a while, and went back in his cage. We repeated this every day for a week, at the end of which he finally ventured off the porch. All summer we would let Tweeter out in the afternoon, he would fly into the forest or wherever for hours on end, and before nightfall he would be back in his cage. As it goes he has been with us for a year now, and we still have Tweeter. We learned he is afraid of the dark. We still let him outside and he still returns faithfully every time.