The Tiny Cenzontle Bird

Story

April 14, 2020

Pablo Hinojosa

Pablo Hinojosa

text story

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The other day (Sunday, April 12). My family and I noticed something on the ground, it was a baby Cenzontle bird (Northern Mockingbird). The reason why I am telling this is that in normal circumstances we may have not noticed it. The bird was ok, he did not harm himself. Since we need to stay home we spend more time wandering around the backyard. My siblings were playing in the backyard (which is not usual in normal circumstances, they usually at that time on Sundays they are watching tv or something else) when they noticed a louder bird sound and they search the sound source, they ended up finding the little bird, all of us were charmed by that ugly creature (not going to lie about it), baby birds are ugly but they have that something that makes them beautiful, we were constantly checking him while he was wandering around the backyard. The issue is that we know that sometimes there are some cats wandering around every once in a while so we decided that around eight post-meridian (8:00 PM), to put it in a box and bring him inside. The decision on why to do that is that at that specific time its already dark outside so the bird's parents would not be searching for him and they are not going to get stressed for not being able to watch his son/daughter and also to avoid cats. The little bird is very docile and very energetic at the same time. When I tried picking him up he obviously did not like the idea but he did not have any option. We used a shoebox, we made some holes in it for the airflow and leave inside the box some meat with a mosquito attached to it. The night passed so quickly (as usual) and even on this social distancing I still wake up around six almost 7 ante-meridian, but this time my mother woke me up earlier it was five-forty or so and her words were "El pollito esta pillando" which means "The tiny bird is chirping". I literally jumped off my bed and rush to the first floor to take out the little bird, not because the sound bother us because he is still a baby and needs to be fed by someone (us or the parents), unfortunately, we do not have any bird food so we can not exactly give him food and if the parents hear him they will rush to give him food, I took him outside and opened the box lid and waited for him to get out of the box (he is able to jump which gives me a clue of how he managed to get out of the nest), this routine lasted until yesterday (April 13) because he seems more capable of climbing and he likes to run away every time I tried to pick him up, I am able to come close to him but if I try to pick him up like I used to he tries to go away. Tonight (April 14) I did not try to pick him up because he was able to climb a tree we have and the parents were giving him food there. I estimate that he will be there for a couple of days maybe a week until he knows how to fly, with this experience I noticed that all of my family miss taking care of an animal.

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