It looked like a giant puffball mushroom at the edge of the driveway. I saw it and managed to drive around it, then Jim and I went to investigate. Instead of a mushroom, it was a bird. Jim took a picture on his phone and looked it up – it was a quail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which made him worried. It\u2019s not really native to our area and it has been domesticated to be bulkier and not fly as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim assumed that it was an escaped pet and was determined to catch it and try to find the owner on facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, while he watched it, I went inside to get a box. Then back inside to get a bigger box. We chased it around the next door neighbor\u2019s yard and the neighbor across the street saw us and came over. We weren\u2019t making much progress except to find that it could fly – not well, but well enough to avoid us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The across-the-street-neighbor said that the neighbor-on-the-corner raised quail and it must have escaped.\u00a0 Across-the-street got the attention of On-the-corner – who had just gotten home – and reported what was going on.\u00a0 On-the-corner came over and said it was really his wife that raised them – and that she may have let this one loose on purpose. It was violent to the other birds – he called her to confirm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Jim and I are still trying to trap it and Across-the-street is talking about \u201ccircle of life\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His kids have startled it to the backyard of Next-door – who we haven\u2019t seen in a few days – and On-the-Corner reluctantly follows. Then he reports that it has vanished into the undergrowth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s done at that point and Across-the-street and his kids leave as well. I go into our backyard and Jim goes into the Next-door yard to try and find it – but no luck. It\u2019s gone and on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My big hearted Jim is now heartbroken. He so badly wanted to save this bird that likely can\u2019t save itself. We have lots of wildlife in the neighborhood and some of them are predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, even if we could catch it, we\u2019re not set up to keep a bird – even really in the short term. And that\u2019s if we can find someone to take in a bird long term that has a violent history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We haven\u2019t seen the bird since and we\u2019re assuming that it didn\u2019t make it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re not happy with the On-the-corner neighbor anyway – he yells at his kids constantly – and this seemed heartless from his family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim\u2019s empathy has been in overdrive since we lost Talbot – he was quietly distraught and went to bed early that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t really about the quail. Just the latest in a line of animals and people we can\u2019t save.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It looked like a giant puffball mushroom at the edge of the driveway. I saw it and managed to drive around it, then Jim and I went to investigate. Instead of a mushroom, it was a bird. Jim took a picture on his phone and looked it up – it was a quail. Which made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"1","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3406,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}