Home Family Stories The Weekend Report: Me and The Wild Animals

The Weekend Report: Me and The Wild Animals

by Jamie

Summer time can be sort of wild when you are raising children, right? Granted, it’s a different kind of crazy than the chaos that happens to a family during the school year. There are no homework assignments to help with, carpools to drive or lunches to pack. Everyone is home. Home sweet home.

Ahhhh, I love it when everyone is home.

Holy cow, everyone is home.

I can’t hear myself think, everyone is home. 🙂

It’s super great.

We’ve spent a lot of time at the lake this summer, soaking in each others wild company and enjoying all of the actual wild animal life that exists on this mountainside. The little bunny pictured above fell into our window well and my kids spent no less than 4.2 hours trying to rescue it. Which is an afternoon well spent, if you ask me. I rate it as being about 1000% times more productive and educational than playing Clash of Clans which is what they would love to do at all hours of the day if I were willing to let them.

The baby bunny was cuddled by several of my kids for a short and appropriate time and then let out in the wild to carry on with whatever baby bunnies do that live in a mountainous terrain. It was a great afternoon.

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There have been a plethora of moose meandering around through the neighborhood. They are always so fun to watch, as long as I am safe in my house or car.

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Early on in the season while MyHandsomeHusband and I were working on building a new deck (more on that subject to come in a future post) we saw two birds delivering mouthfuls of worms to the inside of our grill. Because we are very intelligent and good at figuring out mysterious situations, we naturally assumed there were baby birds holed up in our grill being fed their good parents. And considering the fact that we wanted to feed our own children grilled hot dogs for dinner and not baby birds, MyHandsomeHusband carefully opened the grill with  the intention of moving the nest to a safer spot. Somewhere far from scorching flames. Because he is super nice like that.

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However, when he opened the grill the nest broke apart and half of it fell to the deck floor. And then, ladies and gentlemen…

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6 little baby birds were hopping all over our deck in frantic fashion. My kids and I started hopping all over the porch as well, trying not to step on them and trying to keep them from falling off the edge of the deck. It is important and this point in the story for you to know that our deck is about 12 feet above the ground. We were in a very serious, dire situation, as you can see.

It was the most entertainment we had had in several days, people. Truly.

You’ll be happy to know that we rescued all of the baby birds, put their nest carefully on the lowest branch of a tree in our yard and told the little birds “…call out to your mama! She is flying around here in a state of panic, cheep loudly so she can find you!”

And wouldn’t you know it, but it only the took the parent birds 30 seconds to find their babies, which was very impressive to me and my little family. A couple of the baby birds hopped out of the nest and onto the ground below. We were amazed to watch the parent birds quickly round up sticks and build a small nest around the birds that had fallen to the ground. It was fascinating! These were some amazing birds, to say the least.

I couldn’t help but feel bad for those poor parent birds, so worried about the little ones they had been tending to so carefully. I feel like them, sometimes. I really do. Raising babies is wild, chaotic and a huge amount of work. Unexpected things tend to happen on a regular basis and I have to admit, I am prone to become a little bit panicked when I think of all scary things that could happen to my own little ones (who aren’t so little anymore, my oldest turned 18 today…how did that happen!).

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At the end of the day, when I get in bed at night and think over all of the fun, chaotic, great, frustrating, endearing, exhausting and wonderful things that have gone on during the day I remind myself that the wild times are worth it. I tell myself to keep calm, stop pressing the panic button and just enjoy the crazy ride.

…while it’s still here to enjoy.

Happy summer, everyone. Hope you are having a great (wild) time.

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16 comments

Gail Plaskiewicz August 1, 2015 - 8:39 am

I didn’t know that about birds. I thought if humans had anything to do with them the parents wouldn’t feed them or am I thinking of something else? When my dad was well and could use his hands better, he used to build bird houses. We have 2 hanging up. One of them has no bottom because the wood rotted out after all these years but birds built a nest in it anyway. You can see nest sticking out of the hole on the front of it.
When I went to OK to visit some friends we found a tiny baby bunny in my friends yard. Smaller then yours and it was all alone. We brought it in the house and we were holding it and petting it and singing to it. I guess we were worried about leaving it alone outside,like some animal might get it or something. It was so soft and warm and it liked us, although kids & babies always seem to like me anyway. I don’t remember what happened to it. I think we had to leave to go home the next day which is why I don’t remember what happened to it. I’ve never been a mom but I got to be a mom for a little while anyway.
Sounds like you’ve been having a lot of fun. It’s nice to hear when people are having fun.

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Erin R. August 1, 2015 - 8:05 pm

Wow, two rescues! Or I guess seven, if you count each little one. And parent birds are amazing. They will fight cats, dogs, people innocently digging in the yard and not even noticing the baby bird hopping along in the grass, etc. They will go to war for their babies. It’s absolutely thrilling and uplifting to see. Thank you so much for showing us your beautiful pictures!

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Amy August 2, 2015 - 9:43 am

I love your blog – especially posts like this! Thank you for sharing your talents with my family.

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Emma August 12, 2015 - 10:11 pm

What a fun post! Isn’t it great how we can find life lessons in nature?!

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