The Urban Chicken

My dd is a modern Dr Doolittle. Animals just know to come here. I will go out for an hour, and come home to a dog sitting on the back porch, waiting expectantly for the dd to arrive and care for them. One time it was a little Shih Tzu from up the block. I didn't recognize him, but of course the dd did. His name was Amadeus, and when we called his owner, she said "thank God, I was sitting here saying the Hail Mary, hoping he'd come back."

So it should be of no surprise that now the birds know where we are. DD called me at work and said that she'd found a bird in the backyard. It was a pigeon with a broken wing, which she promptly called the Urban Chicken. Cornered it and got him to hop into a cat carrier, and when her brother tried to pet him, she said "don't touch him, you'll get the bird flu." Serious as a judge, she was. Oye.

Well, we have two dogs and two cats, so our house is not exactly a haven for birds, so she decided to take it to work, cause she works at the vet. Apparently, one of the girls there used to work on a chicken farm, so the dd figured if the vet wouldn't know how to fix an urban chicken, the co-worker would. Took it in, dropped it by the door, and told her co-worker, "go look, there's a chicken over there," to which the co-worker responded, "that's no chicken, that's a pigeon." "Nope," says the dd, "that's an Urban Chicken.

Well, they couldn't fix her, but they recommended a bird rescue who could. She called, and arranged for her to bring him up to For the Birds, a bird rescue run by a delightful couple from the UK. We drove up there and found a porch full of fledglings in cages, owls and hawks in large cages in the yard, and a kitchen literally full of birdlings of all sizes -- including some who didn't even have feathers. These people are truly bird angels. So the Urban Chicken was dropped off there, to be delivered later to a pigeon keeper nearby, should he not be able to go back to the wild.

Two weeks later, we come home to a tiny little robin, hopping around on the ground. After consulting with the bird rescue, we left well enough alone, made sure he got fed by his mama for a day or two, then off he flew, to wherever birds fly to. And so, in honor of the bird rescue, here's a wonderful Patriotic Bird Dress, from Dorothea's Closet, on ebay. Perfect for July, and for when the government arrives, to report the first case of bird flu ever gotten from an Urban Chicken.