Our first entry is from none other than CrAzY Tess and she has done it again…
Crazy Larry and Dirty Mary
Due to too many pictures of birds that I accumulated in my two years as a photographer, I could not decide “as always” what to submit. Finally, I decided to submit something that is special to me and a I feel as a big accomplishment not just to me but also to my husband Nick.
I apologize ahead for sending few pictures, but each one of these is special to me.
Living in the country is fun and if you love animals, you will end up adopting everything. All of our three spoiled kids (Dogs) are adopted from being stray. We adopted pretty much everything until we find a home for these animals that were being abandoned or lost. To name a few, we adopted a bird, cow, horse, dogs and the last one that broke our hearts for he/she died was a baby bunny we named Sam. Sam for Samantha or Samuel, for we don’t know the sex of that little thing.
Almost two years ago, my husband found this bird we named Crazy Larry on the ground that fell from a flimsy tree branch that his mama made the nest. We read that once a person touches a bird or even their nest, the mom is going to abandon the baby bird or the nest. Knowing this, we adopted this little thing. The first picture is Crazy Larry when we first got him. He was the ugliest little bird I ever seen. We gave him water using a medicine dropper and made use of the tons of grasshoppers that we had. It was a challenge on how to take care of him, but we tried our best. Crazy Larry is too little but can eat up to 8 grasshoppers per day on the first few days that we got him. The number of grasshoppers he eats went up to 30 per day at one month old from adoption (No wonder why birds are natural insecticide).
Three weeks later, Crazy Larry started to jump but don’t know how to fly. One day my husband was outside of his “man cave” where we put Crazy Larry and found him on the ground. He picked him up then put him back to his cage. The moment my husband placed him back to his cage….. confusion…Crazy Larry was there. It was another bird after all. Then Dirty Mary was born. The question whether they really are female or male is not definite but it looks like we are right with their sex based on their features.
A month after, Dirty Mary started to fly inside of the man cave but still goes back inside of the cage (we keep the cage’s door open), but not Crazy Larry. Probably because he was so dependent to us due to the long time that we have him.
Flying Practice: The problem was, Crazy Larry doesn’t know how to fly. So here comes my crazy husband…. Just imagine a 225lbs man trying to teach a bird how to fly. It was absolutely hilarious. Slowly he tried to pick Crazy Larry up and kind of gently drop him in a short drop and gradually increase the height of the drop until finally Crazy Larry learned how to fly. Slowly he and Dirty Mary will fly around the man cave then goes back in to the cage.
Sad Moment: At six weeks, Dirty Mary flew away and did not come back but we knew that she was safe for she flies like a normal bird. Crazy Larry flies outside and his flying ability improved tremendously but still comes back to inside of his cage and greet us every time we arrived from work, it was such a sweet feeling. Seven weeks later, when my husband came home…..no Crazy Larry was around. We are so sad, at the same time happy for him for he belonged to the wild. Until now, every time we see a bird like Crazy Larry and Dirty Mary, we wonder whether it is one of them.
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