The other morning when I was letting Maxine out, I noticed a Plover on the driveway.  Although I’ve seen plenty of Plovers in my adventures on the island, I had yet to see one on my driveway.  In fact I rarely ever see them around my hood except for on rooftops on very windy days.  They hang out mostly in open fields and right by the ocean. So seeing one on my driveway was a little surprising.  When I went out to greet it, it hardly moved, which was a clear indicator that something was wrong.

Serving Hard Time

Shiraki was out and about so I enlisted his help in trapping it in the grass under a laundry basket he was using to protect his rotting Camaro from the rain (yes what is essentially a bucket with holes is protecting one of his five cars from the elements). We then fashioned a box with a towel, jar lid full of electrolyte laced water,  and left it out of the wind and somewhere dry.  I then proceeded to call the Wild Bird Rehab Haven which had an answering message saying that they were at capacity.  I wasn’t sure what to do next, but luckily someone on Twitter suggested that I call the humane society because they will pick it up since it’s in fact a federally protected species.

Animal Ambulance or Meal On Wheels, You Decide

So I did just that, and an hour or so later the animal ambulance came to pick up the bird. The Animal EMT said it looked like a cat had attacked our feathered friend. In the interim I had emailed the Bird Haven people because an online article published in 2007 said their answering message had said they were at capacity for a few months and I was curious if they’d been at capacity for several years or if it was just busy bird breaking season.  They responded pretty quickly with information that their person who is certified to handle federally protected birds was off-island, and that only one veterinarian in a neighboring town was qualified to handle these little wonders of nature.  They also said that if I called the Humane Society, they would pick it up and deliver it to this veterinarian. Being one step ahead of people is kinda my style.  I would have known ze Germans were coming long before hood-rats were sieg heiling, it’s just in my nature.

I should have been a trend forecaster, but instead I’m a web developer in a beach hut that on some mornings partakes in saving federally protected species from the cats that live in my neighborhood.  The moral of the story is not to familiarise yourself with species in your locality that you may not know are protected, and it’s not to do the right thing when you see something in need of help, but something far more significant.  Euthanize any cats you ever see.  They are worthless, cause more harm than good, and nothing preys on them and therefore they aren’t a necessity in nature’s food chain. Also any ‘cool’, ‘best’, ‘nice’, ‘different’ cat that you or anyone you know ever had was probably also ‘just like a dog’ (cause all the cats that people like are), and therefore it is an evolutionary failure so put it out of it’s failed existence.  All I’m saying is that if a local restaurant served free-range cat, I’d eat their regularly. I’d probably go so far as to order extra meals that I would have no intention of eating and would just throw out.  That’s how much I love cats.