06.13.18

today i granted my first interview to a foreign journalist: my friend and fellow bookstore volunteer V asked if she could chat with me for her spanish class, for which participants must quiz and profile people. it's a very competitive class, she said, and she thought she had a real ace in the hole with the story of me and my wild animals; she asked if i could send her a few of my photos of ben bird, of randy the opossum, of the hospital lobby teeming with ambulatory waterfowl. "one of my classmates told the story of a wild night of dancing when she was in cuba in the '80s," V said. "she and her girlfriends just hit the floor with a group of men they met, then exhausted themselves, waved to their partners, and headed back to their tables. someone turned to her: you knew that was fidel castro, right?" godspeed, V.

06.12.18

we have an especially small canada gosling at the wildlife hospital who can't mix with the other young waterfowl (or even the chickens), try as he would; he's come near to being pecked to death or swallowed whole more times than i can count (looking at you, gulls). he was sequestered with the juvenile squirrels in reception when i was around last week, and he was down in the basement with us today―bad news, as far as i'm concerned, as it is remarkably easy to mistake a little bird for a patch of floor.* an hour before i left for the afternoon, A released two juvenile crows from the darkened operating room they'd been sharing with an opossum―they needed the fly time we'd been giving the pigeons, and dog toys (fantastic corvids!), and a chance to mess up the pharmacy. mostly they wanted to give the laundry corner an edward gorey soundtrack, and the little gosling, how he wanted to imprint on those teen crows―each time one paused on the floor he'd spatter over to join its black train. you know that they'll kill you if you keep that up, right? everything is rejection to an orphaned gosling; why wouldn't you try to shoot the moon?

i would like to stay up for news of #mprraccoon this evening, but election nights and wildlife rehab have taught me that most things end badly. but why wouldn't you try to shoot the moon? there's cat food aplenty on the roof, exquisite one. give 'em hell.


*ben the cardinal, my best bird, broke his shoulder a few years ago when he mistook a staffer's shoelaces for worms and she in turn mistook him for a patch of floor. his woes have accumulated since then and i should probably talk about how he is doing now, but that is the sort of thing i write and delete late at night. he is dying, okay? he is dying.