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While following the walk around the swimming pool I noticed a dove that
seemed to be holding his wing a bit awkwardly. I wondered if he had injured it
and as I approached I noticed that he would not fly, but only scurried away. I
wondered what I should do about it. The poor bird could never survive out here
on his own. One of my Thai friends, who lived just a few doors down the hall
from me, was a veterinarian, so I called her and explained that I had found a bird
with a broken wing. She does not speak English fluently, but she repeated back
to me "broken wing" with some sense of urgency in her voice. I had wondered if
she would be too tied up to be of assistance, but I was surprised when she said
that although she was out on the roads she would be here in a few minutes. She
did in fact, arrive quite quickly, but when I started talking about a bird down
the boardwalk she seemed disinterested, and wondreed what I was talking about. We both had a good laugh when she revealed that she thought that I,
myself, had a broken arm. Even though she had repeated "broken wing" back to me,
she still had confused my arm with the wing of a bird. I attempted to catch the
bird so she could examine him, and I thought I had him cornered, having
forgotten there was a small opening under the wall, so that when I reached
for him he slipped away and into the swimming pool. From one of the windows in
the brick wall we watched him begin to float across the water. I could either jump in the
pool and go after him, or I could walk around the pool. We were near
the middle of a pool that is over 120 yardes long, and it would take a few
minutes to walk all the way around to the other side, but walking still seemed a
better option than wading. I found him on the opposite side of
the pool under some bushes but cornered against a wall. I was
able to get my hands around him and hand him to my friend. After
examining him she said that she thought his wing was too small,
and his bones too fragile to set correctly. Since a veterinarian
wouldn't be able to mend his wing anyway I decided not to take
him to a clinic (although my friend was qualified as a vet, she
was currently more involved in marketing and didn't
have any X-ray equipment in her clinic.) I took the bird up and placed him in
my bathroom, after which my friend introduced me to a colleague
of hers that took me shopping for materials to prepare for the
care of a wild bird. |
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