Injured Wing

I finished my weekly routine of mowing the lawn, doing the trim, and raking, when I entered my garage and a bird flew by my head. The poor guy flew into the window on the door, dropped to the ground, and hopped away. From a short distance, I followed the bird to the end of the driveway as it skittered under a couple parked cars.

I really wanted to make sure it was okay, but when I got near, the bird squawked to high hell, and I probably looked silly trying to tell it to relax. I'm pretty sure my cougarish neighbor across the street, who watched from her porch, thought I was talking to myself.

Eventually, the bird scampered into a prickly hedge. I crouched and looked in, trying to gauge the bird's injury. Though flapping, I think its wing was injured but didn't seem to be broken. Upon inspection, the bird was young; its neck was a bit ruffled with small, gray feathers.

While a sunny day, it's a bit of a bummer to see an animal suffer an injury and not be able to do anything to relieve its pain. I'm just hoping the bird gets airborne before a neighborhood cat, dog, or the local fox I've seen in the yard catches wind of a potential meal.

The fox worries me the most. One time, I discovered the hind legs of a squirrel, still hairy, attached to a bare, gnawed spine. Come to think of it, the squirrels in the yard are nonexistant these days when there used to be several of them.

I guess in an instance like this, I just have to let nature run its course and hope the bird lives to fly another day.