Guest Blog: Himself -- "Concussion"

I liked the story Himself wrote about our adventure yesterday and he agreed to share it.

>>>>>>>>>>

Since getting a laptop computer Teri is able to work in the dining room instead of having to go downstairs where her desktop computer sat in her office. Being there is only two of us using the dinner table her laptop stays at the far end all the time…

...straight across from the deck picture windows.

Today, while pausing in her typing, she happened to look up and was ‘gazing off into the distance’ thru the windows. Besides having normal things like deck furniture and a gas grill on the deck, we have an iron hook with a net bag holding a chunk of suet for any type of birds that might like that sort of thing. One of the types of birds that does?

Downy woodpeckers...

Downy woodpeckers are fun to watch picking at the suet—with feet designed to cling to almost anything, however he lands on the suet bag is fine. If there are other birds crowding him, he will just hang upside down onto the bottom where other birds can’t.

Well, one must have been hanging upside down too long and had all the blood rush to his head...

Teri was looking out thru the windows just as one left the suet bag and flew straight into it. WHAM! (We are guessing that from the outside, the windows ‘reflect sky’ and a bird, seeing that, thinks that he can fly that way.) Regardless, after crashing straight on into the window, he fell unconscious to the loveseat cushion out there on the deck.

Good, at least that landing was soft...

Me? Being I woke up at 3:00 AM, I was taking a nap around 11:00 AM when this event happened. But sometimes you ‘become instantly awake’ when you hear the sound of your loved one’s voice calling out with alarm and concern. I was just getting to that phase of my nap where you ‘slide off into never-never land’ when I heard Teri’s concerned voice of, “Husband...?!” By the time I stumbled into the room Teri had already went to the glass window and saw feathers plastered to it -- some still un-sticking themselves from the glass and sliding down to follow their owner...

Our gaze following the falling feather’s owner, there lying knocked out was a downy woodpecker. Man, it MUST have been a hard hit to knock out a bird that obtains food by banging his head into a tree!

But time for a compassionate rescue.

We gathered up the poor little thing & brought him inside the house and out of the cold—putting him into a large yellow plastic pitcher on a bed of fluffed-up paper towels. Then put the lid on--leaving an air-hole large enough for the bird to get air but not crawl out. Then let him be for awhile.

The bird would make it, or not...

Going about our business, we eventually hear Downy waking up...scrambling a bit against the side of the pitcher...wondering how he went from flying in the wide-open great outdoors to waking up in a hazy yellow world. With a headache. Missing feathers...

The good news is that after reaching into the yellow pitcher and retrieving him, my poking and prodding of the poor thing got the proper response...

...he bit me.

OK, Downy is going to be just fine. After a little more wake-up time I took him out to the deck and tossed him into the air. Off he flew--with a slightly crooked flight pattern I suppose, but fly he did.

God is good...

(“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” Matthew 10:29)

 

Starting to wake up...  (about what I looked like when I first heard the call of, “Husband...?!”)

A moment later, and seconds before getting bit.   Yep, Downy will be OK...