Taking Sunshine for a Ride

What started out as a little stroll around the neighborhood yesterday afternoon turned into our thrill of the week.  Here is the story, embroidered a little arbitrarily with photos.

It begins with deceptive simplicity, as so many stories do. We were out for a walk. On that walk Columbus discovered something I wish he hadn't: namely, that if he can squirm free of the stroller, he has carte blanche and can go where he likes.  What you can't see in this picture is me behind the camera, juggling the camera and the now redundant stroller.

Always a girl with a keen eye out for birds, Petunia spotted a chunky little yellow guy hopping along the ground; and here is where my photos become, for a moment, sadly inadequate.  I failed to snap a shot of the yard, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and our collective involvement with them, their van and their notebooks; or even of the pervasive fluster when it was first discovered that the bird had a broken wing and couldn't fly; but I will just mention that keeping track of three kids, an incoming phone call, a walking baby, a hurt bird on the move, a slippery camera phone, two informational missionaries, and a bike, got a touch dicey before it was all done. We almost left the bike behind.  

The missionary ladies were good for two things. They told us our hurt bird was a grosbeak, and they told us to call WSU's Veterinary Hospital.  Which (having several attentive small people closely observing our every move) we did.  Half an hour later, we had met some new neighbors, charged en masse all over a backyard not our own, and contained a fat yellow bird in a box labeled for beer.  

He turned out to be a friendly, inquisitive little fellow...

...who only got away once and enjoyed the ride almost as much as we did.  

I explained all about wildlife preservation laws and the host of reasons why we couldn't keep a wounded grosbeak, especially not in the cage with our parakeet.  That topic had still not been dropped as much as an hour later, and since I had felt all along that I should pick my battles, the bird was first named Sunshine--a name wildly unpopular with the backseat bourgeoisie--and then hastily renamed Peanut, for reasons as yet not fully understood.  By this time we were at the hospital and it was too late to change his name again.  We handed him over to an assistant named Cody, who, it turns out, has her own wounded pet grosbeak at home. A female.  If Sunshine-Peanut is unable to be mended, the likelihood of him finding true love at Cody's house is very high.  

He sat on Cody's knee, and on Petunia's shoulder, and we said our goodbyes and went home. As we exited the hospital we met a guy from the Raptor Club, and an owl named Sprite. 

We talked to them extensively, and beyond extensively, until I disengaged us from the fascinating spectacle of a man wearing an owl. 

On the way home we stopped to smell the bears. You can't see the bears in this photo (neither could we see them in person) but I promise they were there, stalking around somewhere behind the thirty-three layers of chainlink fencing.  

I would love to pretend that days like this are a direct result of my vibrantly creative approach to homeschooling.  But the truth is, although it might have something to do with having a lovely, flexible afternoon schedule, they really aren't.