The four of us came home yesterday to find a wounded bird on our front porch. The bird had wiggled itself up against the house and was hiding under a pile of leaves. When Susan brushed it out we saw that it had a broken leg and a broken wing. I told the kids to leave it alone and go inside.

About two hours later, we walked outside to find the bird lying on its back and screaming its head off. Other birds had gathered on our gutter and were perched there, watching the wounded bird scream. It was really weird. Eventually Susan said, “Well, there’s only one thing we can do,” and I was thinking so, do I should shoot it or just stomp on it? But actually what she meant was we should take it to the vet, so it’s a good thing for the bird that Susan lives here.

Susan called the local vet but they told us they don’t take injured wild animals there. Instead they referred us to Wild Care Oklahoma … which is in Norman, about an hour away. Before I could ask Mason if he had seen my pellet gun around, Susan and Morgan had loaded the bird onto a makeshift stretcher, fed it some water by dipping a leaf into some water, and loaded the bird into the van.

2 1/2 hours later they returned, sans bird. Wild Care said that they could set the bird’s broken wing and that it should be off and flying again in about two weeks — which, everyone including the bird agrees, is a better fate than a pellet to the head.

Somewhere, some bird owes us $15 in gas money.