We Saved a Bird!

I was watering flowers last night when a robin chirped loudly and made me jump. When I looked up he was sitting in the bush right next to me. I looked closer and saw that he was tangled up in the netting that the previous owners had put on the bush to keep the deer from eating it. :(

I grabbed Mike. We proceeded to have a 10 minute "discussion" about the proper approach before settling on a plan of Mike holding the bird while I did the surgery. Mike held the bird while it was still attached to the bush. Then I cut a big circle of netting out so that we could move the bird out of the bush. Since we were losing the light, we took him to the front porch where there was better light. We spent another 30 minutes carefully cutting away the netting. His feet and wings were tangled, and his head was through two sections of net. Mike had to loosen his grip in a small area just enough that I could work on each little section for a while.

The robin alternated between periods of freaking out and trying to bite us and resting calmly while we worked. The robin nipped me once and so I promptly withdrew my hand and smacked poor Mike in the face.

Anyway, we think we got ALL of the netting off the bird. When we let him go, he took off right out of Mike's hands and flew away. So I think he escaped unharmed.


Mike holding the bird. You can see the netting.

I removed the netting from the bush this morning!

It certainly made for an interesting evening! We felt like heroes. :)

- Corinne (& Mike)