Fastest Things on Wings

by Terry Masear

  I listen to the story in stunned silence. And I thought my windshield-wiper bird from Riverside had had a hard day.

  “Do you have any idea what we can do with them?” he asks as they both look at me innocently.

  “No, I just do hummingbirds.” I try to deflect his overture.

  “Well, we have to be at the airport in an hour,” he says, looking at his watch. “Could you take them for us?” he entreats as his companion pulls out his wallet and begins stuffing ten- and twenty-dollar bills into my blue-jean jacket. “Please?” They both look at me with exaggerated pleading in their eyes. “It would be such a relief,” he says while his friend continues extracting crisp bills from his wallet and tossing them onto the hummingbird cage inside my car.

  “Okay, okay.” I laugh as I close the car door and take the box in my arms. “Your language is persuasive. And the ducks and hummingbirds thank you for your generosity.”

  “And we thank you.” They both bow in deference with their palms together in the Thai gesture of gratitude as they back away. “You’re a beautiful person.”

  “Who knows nothing about ducks,” I mumble to myself as I watch them speed off in their Mercedes coupe. And suddenly, looking at the nine little brown-and-yellow fluff balls crouching in the corner of the box, I am overcome by layers of fear that course through me with terrifying urgency. I have never taken care of a duck in my life. What do they eat? How do I feed them? How warm do they need to be? What about their mother? She must be going crazy looking for them. Will they make it through the night without her? Should I try to put them back so she can find them? But where? And what if they start dying? What will I do? What have I done?

  After putting the box in my hatchback, I hop into the car and glance around anxiously. Sitting in the dimly lit parking lot with the heater blasting, I look at the young hummingbird buckled into the passenger’s seat and derive tremendous comfort from her presence. As messed up as she seems, I know exactly what to do. I can save a hummingbird while I am half asleep and with my eyes closed, and I often have. But I’m in the dark with baby ducks. I call Jean immediately, rattle off my fears, mention some possible alternatives, and beg for guidance.

  “No, you can’t put them back out on Montana,” Jean says as if she’s talking to an idiot.

  “Of course not,” I agree, coming to my senses.

  “They’ll be pressed duck in under a minute if you do.”

  “What should I do, then?”

  “Let me call you back.”

  Jean makes a few calls and finally reaches a colleague who at one time or another has rescued just about every wild creature you can find in Southern California and who calls and deftly advises me on what to feed them. When I stop at a local market on my way home to pick up duck-appropriate food for the fuzzy bunch, “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass is playing over the store’s PA system, reminding me of all the nights I have spent shuttling helpless birds around the city. When I get home, Frank and I coax the insufferably cute ducklings, which all scurry from one corner of the box to the other in a tightly knit group like cartoon characters, into eating enough to get through the night.

  By ten thirty I have the sugarcoated shelter bird bathed and blow-dried, and the ducklings have settled into a furry mound for the night. In the dim light I inspect the long line of nestlings in the ICU, who are sleeping in tangled piles like a class of preschoolers stranded at the airport. I look more closely, examining the chicks for parasites. Mites have an odd effect on the human mind. For hours after you have gotten the creepy crawlers off your skin, they live on in your brain like phantom limbs. And despite the nestlings’ clean and relaxed appearance, I begin to hallucinate that I see mites on the birds and feel them crawling all over my hands and arms. I don my surgical loupes and examine the nestlings’ bills and then myself. Not a mite in sight. I let out the longest exhale of the year, turn off the light, and head for bed, where Frank is sleeping soundly through what to me is starting to feel like war. At eleven thirty, just as I am slumping into bed so drained I can barely move, my phone rings.

  “Terry?” a hesitant female voice asks.

  “Yes, this is Terry,” I repeat for the fortieth time that day in what is starting to sound like some haunting Nietzschean mantra.

  “Sorry to call so late . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I lie as I tiptoe downstairs with the phone. “What’s up?”

  “I have a ruby-throated hummingbird that was trapped in my garage all day and finally fell to the floor. He’s still alive but I don’t know what to do with him.”

  “He’s not a ruby-throated,” I correct her. “He’s probably an Anna’s. But I can help you with him,” I assure her, and then I walk her through our overnight-care routine for trapped or unconscious adults.

  “Well, I’ve been giving him sugar water for a while now but he still isn’t trying to fly.”

  “It could be because it’s so late and he’s going to sleep. How long have you been feeding him?”

  “A couple of hours. He seemed fine at first but now I’m really worried because his feathers are getting all puffy.”

  “That means he’s going into torpor.”

  “I’m so scared he’s going to die. What should I do?” she pleads helplessly.

  “Okay, look, I’m not asleep yet, so why don’t you bring him to me and I’ll take over so you won’t have to stress about him all night or deal with it in the morning.”

  “Um, well I’d like to bring him, but it’s kind of a long drive.”

  “How long?” I ask with trepidation, trying to avoid another contentious phone encounter.

  “I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me where you are and I can tell you how far the drive is.”

  “I’m in Ohio,” she answers flatly.

  “Ohio. That’s a long drive,” I concede. “And you’re right. He is a ruby-throated.”

  As I’m heading back to bed after advising my long-distance caller, I hear the wind kicking up outside and immediately feel a sense of impending doom that leads me to reflect on the alternate reality hummingbird rescue has dropped me into. My awareness of the myriad dangers in the hummingbird world has ruined so many things that once were pleasures in my earlier, uninformed life. Like the way I used to love listening to the rain while lying in bed at night, and even more, the wind. I once relished falling asleep to the rhythm of raindrops pattering on the skylight overhead or the sound of the wind gusting through the jacaranda branches outside the bedroom window. But now whenever a downpour starts or a windstorm blasts into the city, I lie awake and worry about young hummingbirds. I think of all the nests hanging in the balance out there that might, with a heavy rain or a strong wind, be swept away and destroyed in seconds.

  Pondering the differences between rehabbers and normal people brings to mind the weighty demands wildlife rescue places on its human foot soldiers. A lot of callers who stumble upon lost and injured hummingbirds assume anybody can rehabilitate them. It looks so easy when they bring one bird into rescue. But nothing could be further from the truth. To rehabilitate a single hummingbird, and do it conscientiously enough to ensure his survival in the wild, is anything but simple. And when I consider the mental, physical, and emotional toll rehab exacts on its human volunteers—the arduous days, six months of nail-biting stress, crushing workload between April and August—on top of the focus, patience, tenacity, self-sacrifice, organization, and people skills required, I realize that precious few people have the resources to pull it off.

  Just do what needs to be done, Lao Tzu advises. And there’s the challenge, Lao Tzu. Now that I know, I do. Over the years, dedicated rehabbers have taught by example that the best don’t quit, cut and run, or hand their problems off to others when the going gets tough. The best press on through illness, injury, and personal trauma, remaining steadfast and resolute despite the chaos erupting around them. They go down with the ship. That’s commitment. That’s character. And that’s the devoted
band of rehabbers who persevere through the levels of pain that bear down on them with the weight of the world every spring and summer. And as I stagger up the stairs sometime around midnight, too tired to sleep, and then sink into bed, I’m proud to be one of them.

  I report to Jean’s front door with the ducklings early the next morning, and she arranges to deliver them to the Wetlands Wildlife and Care Center in Huntington Beach, where they will be rehabbed and banded before being released into a protected natural habitat nearby. As I hand the drowsy ducklings over to her, with the hopping beat of “Rescue Me” still pounding in my head from the night before, I describe to Jean how songs I hear on the radio frequently get stuck on extended play in my brain as a result of my late-night adventures. “We should have a list of rehab’s greatest hits.”

  “Yeah,” Jean agrees wryly. “Guaranteed to make you cry.”

  “And keep you up all night.”

  Despite the undue stress the ducklings created for me during their twelve hours in my possession, they proved instructive. In the heat of the summer battle, I am beginning to lose patience with finders who are unraveling over hummingbird problems for which the solutions seem absurdly obvious. But my anxious night with the ducklings reminds me how easily the tables can turn and how quickly I can be thrown out of my comfort zone when confronted with wildlife whose needs are entirely unknown to me. I vow to remember that heart-pounding moment when I found myself running scared with the ducks the next time I get a hysterical call about a hummingbird.

  And my pledge of forbearance comes just in time. Because despite the extreme stress I have been straining under the past few weeks, the worst is yet to come.

  CHAPTER 21

  Somewhere Over the Rainbow

  EARLY ONE MORNING about a week later I have a dream that I am standing on an outdoor porch when a giant, eight-foot hummingbird suddenly air-brakes and hovers directly in front of me. His unexpected appearance, imposing size, and brazen approach are frightening, like encountering a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex. But he isn’t trying to kill me. At least I don’t feel he is trying to kill me. Though maybe he is. Either way, I’m scared to death. After several seconds with this oversize hummingbird hovering so close to me that the air from his wing beats blows my curly hair straight like I’m in a wind tunnel, he inches in and taps the center of my forehead with his needle-like bill before flying backward and retreating into the sky. Then another giant hummingbird appears and does the same thing. And pretty soon there are dozens of enormous hummingbirds coming at me. And although they exhibit no aggression or ill intentions, they all seem to want, to need, something from me. But instead of being relieved, I am more terrified than ever. I awake in a heart-pounding panic at five o’clock, just in time to get to work.

  I get up feeling tense and exhausted. When I check my phone, I see it’s June 21. Summer has officially arrived. And Jean’s prediction three years ago that the day would come when the number 21 wouldn’t feel so lucky has proven correct. I scroll through my missed calls and see that I have three, one of which is a voicemail from Jean asking me to call her when I get a chance. After filling stacks of feeders and getting forty caged birds situated outside for the day, I take in a pair of twins discovered crying at dawn after spending the night in a dumpster in Century City, and a hybrid fledgling that appears to be an Allen’s crossed with an Anna’s. Hybrids are rare, but I get a few every year, and their unusual combination of size and color prove endlessly fascinating. This particular hybrid, which came from the UCLA botanical gardens, sports the earthy-rust tail feathers of the Allen’s but has the long, heavier body and grayish-green back of an Anna’s. Because the bird looks so unlike anything I have ever seen, I cannot determine if it is a male or female. Time will tell.

  At ten a.m. I call Jean and before she can say anything, I recount my giant-hummingbird nightmare. Thinking she will be impressed—after my rotating blue-spruce dream and its twenty-one swirling and magical birds three years earlier—at how my perception of hummingbirds has evolved, or devolved, as she so presciently warned, I describe the swarms of gigantic hummingbirds, their distraught appeals for help, and my absolute terror in the face of their demands. Jean listens in silence and then considers the symbolism for a few seconds.

  “Actually, that’s not so far-fetched,” she muses matter-of-factly. “Now get a pen, because I need you to call a guy about a nest in Beverly Hills.”

  “That’s it? You’re blowing me off?”

  “I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you in an hour.” She gives me the number and abruptly hangs up.

  I should have gleaned from my ominous dream that I was heading into a rough day. By now I should know that my nightmares aren’t just late-night entertainment. At eleven I give Pepper her regularly scheduled flight-training exercises. With the exception of Pepper and Gabriel, each bird in my facility has at least one cage mate. Despite their hostility toward one another in the wild, most hummingbirds welcome the presence of a familiar face in rehab, so every day I place Pepper’s and Gabriel’s starter cages side by side, and they have been eyeing each other for over a month now. I have constructed a multitiered perching structure in Pepper’s cage so she can focus on gaining lift when I am not available for flight-training exercises. And Pepper has risen to the challenge, buzzing up and down the perches with dogged persistence. A few weeks ago she would drift to the bottom of the cage and be unable to get back up to her four-inch-high perch without my help. Now when I notice her on the bottom and approach to offer assistance, she flies to the low perch, then rapidly scales the tiers to the top before I can get there. Gabriel watches her closely, and, as with the rambunctious rufous twins earlier in the summer, her activity encourages him. Every time she pops up and down her stairs, he buzzes across the bottom of his cage and then alights on a low perch and looks back over his shoulder at her hopefully. Sometimes their interaction is so poignant I want to sit and watch them all day. And if it were not for the seventy hungry hummingbirds blossoming around us, I just might.

  The minute I finish administering Pepper’s advanced physical therapy session, my phone starts ringing and doesn’t stop. Before noon, I get a fledgling found on a Burbank movie set that is suffering from a blocked crop after being fed mashed strawberries. Soon after that, I receive a young adult who sustained a head injury when he slammed into the front window of Jamba Juice, followed by a fledgling with a badly damaged and infected eye, an adult who got stuck on flypaper while trying to escape a cat and who is missing all of his tail feathers, and a nest of mite-covered twins cut by tree trimmers who left the chicks in the back of a pickup truck for five hours before calling me.

  It’s one of those hot, suffocating days when the city air weighs thick and heavy on its residents and the sun beats down with desert ferocity. At one o’clock, I have to move all of the caged birds into the shade close to the house and mount a fan outside the aviary to circulate the stifling air. After I get everyone cooled down and step into the aviary to change the feeders that always leak badly whenever the sun gets too hot, I find a bird named Rosie lying on the concrete floor breathing hard.

  Rosie is an adult female Anna’s who arrived after crashing into a glass-walled office building in Beverly Hills a month ago. The sensitive young man who picked her up off the sidewalk named her for the unusually bright red spot on her throat. After Rosie’s dizzy arrival, I kept her on a nest in the ICU for a few days until she began flying. Because of serious damage to her right hip, Rosie was incapable of perching. So I isolated her in a cage with especially wide perches, where she struggled to achieve enough stability to rest for a few seconds before flying back and forth in the cage for hours at a time. At first, whenever Rosie reached a dangerous level of exhaustion, I placed her in a small head-injury cage, but her desire to fly was so overpowering she would throw herself against the sides of the cage in an effort to break free. Afraid she might sever her wing feathers in a small cage and unable to restrain her any other way, I resorted to wrapping Ros
ie in a tissue and holding her in my hand for five minutes every two hours so she could rest. Sitting in the garage, cradling the flaming jewel in my palm, I believed that anything was possible and eventually she would prevail, even as I felt her heart beating wildly as if she were racing against some imaginary clock.

  After four weeks of incremental progress, Rosie was able to stay perched for short periods, so I put her in the aviary with a fresh cohort. Each night I retrieved her from the aviary and placed her on the bottom of a dark cage so she could sleep, returning her to the aviary at dawn. Being an experienced adult, Rosie was by far the strongest flier in the aviary and able to hold her own, making larger males who sought to intimidate her back down. But after two days, her flight ability began to decline. While removing feeders just after sunset the night before, I found her lying on her side on the cement. Assuming she had tried to fly off her perch in the dark and gotten disoriented, I put her in a cage for the night and returned her to the aviary that morning. Now I reach down and pick her up off the ground, but instead of kicking and fighting to break free the way she usually does, Rosie goes limp in my hand. I rush her to the ICU, place her in a natural nest, and feed her some formula. A menacing sense of dread threatens to shatter my fragile emotional state as I am feeding the feathered nestlings in the ICU, but I suppress it when the phone rings.

  When I check my list of missed calls, I notice that I have accidentally turned the ringer off and have four new voicemails. I push the call-back button on the first message without listening to the voicemail, which is always a mistake because some people phone me just to chat about hummingbirds, as if I have nothing else to do.

  Rehabbers’ nerves are so jagged by the end of June that we begin pressing long-winded callers to get straight to the point. But some conversations dwell on the hypothetical to an absurd degree. On this unusually stressful afternoon, a caller named Marty answers every question I ask with a baffling non sequitur. After going on at length about his feeders and his love of hummingbirds, Marty begins explaining that he has a problem, but after three minutes of his failing to come to the point, I finally interrupt.