Monday, January 27, 2014
Hiccup was a sparrow who I found as a baby. I myself am fifteen years old now, and he became a part of my life only seven months prior, when I was fourteen. I have a good history with songbirds, as my cats tend to catch them as fledglings fairly often, so I developed a relationship with my local bird rehabilitator.
I discovered him when he was about two weeks old (as I could guess from his size). I had been invited to a friend's birthday party (in the summer), along with a few others. We were running around in the yard outside when I nearly stepped on the poor guy! I picked him up, only to discover that he had only one wing. How this came to be is something that I can never know. perhaps a string (possibly used by the parents to build the nest) became wrapped around it at a very young age and it simply fell off. I did know, however, that leaving him there on the ground meant only immediate death. Being the only one there who had the slightest idea of how to raise a baby bird, I took him home and named him Hiccup, because he was nature's little hiccup (having only one wing and all).
I got a special cage just for him, and gave him some perches low to the ground. I taught him how to eat and drink, as all baby birds should, and although it took a few loop-d-loops around the cage, he learned that he couldn't fly. he was no less acrobatic though, leaping around the cage and taking baths, he barely noticed his disability.
He grew to maturity as well as very attached to me. He would chirp for attention when I walked in the room and sit on my head while I did homework. His favorite snack was mealworms and he would do anything for them! I would love to just sit and watch him hop around singing and eating and taking baths, and he made me smile just looking at him, knowing that the chances of our encounter were one in a million. Sadly, it could not last forever.
Being that he had only one wing, it wasn't likely that he would live nearly as long as I had hoped. Because the wing is directly connected to the respiratory system, and he had no way of exercising and maintaining it, he was only destined to hit a wall, which, sadly, happened during this winter.
I was outside running around and enjoying the snow and when I got cold I came in. I just happened to noticed that he was a little bit off. He was sitting on the floor of his cage rather that perching and seemed to be sleeping, which was strange because he was on the ground. When I tried talking to him, as I often did, he merely looked up and seemed to be having labored breathing. I tried to pick him up to see if possibly he was just having a hard time swallowing some seed, and he just wobbled a little bit and sat down. In a panic I called my parents to tell them something was wrong with Hiccup, and just as they came in he fell over and expired. My storm of grief is probably something that many of you know about, and it lasted for weeks. But I at least found solace in knowing that had I not been there when Hiccup was on the ground, had I not known so much about birds, had any small detail leading up to our encounter been different, he would have died right there as a two week old chick either a brutal death by predators, or a miserable death by freezing. If it had not been for me, he never would have been able to enjoy the life, be it short, that he had, and that made me happy.
