I
As National Blue Jay Awareness Month draws to a close this
week, I’ve been asked to tell the “rest of the story” about the baby Blue Jay I
rescued from the mouth of a golden retriever back in 1979—the bird that made me
fall in love with Blue Jays.
Riding home from the park after I rescued him, I held in my hands a warm,
beautiful little jay who looked at me with bright, trusting eyes; I was scared
to death of screwing up.
The first thing I did when I got home was to call a friend
of mine who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He’d raised a baby
magpie many years before, and was a treasure trove of valuable information
about diet and care. I was a teacher and still had a few days of school to go,
so I brought the bird with me every day, carrying him in a shoebox on the bus.
I fed him every 15 minutes, whether I was in the middle of a lesson or at
recess. The kids in my classes were
as charmed as I, and that meant that 60 more people were invested in his
survival, too.
The Blue Jay never made any sounds at all for the first
three or four weeks. I thought he was deaf so I named him Ludwig. But on the
last day of school, he proved beyond a doubt that he could hear perfectly well.
I brought home a box with all my desk stuff, including an orange bell that I
rang when I wanted the kids to settle down. It was the kind of bell with a
button on top. As I was putting things away in our apartment, Ludwig looked
curiously at it, so I pressed the button and it rang out. He instantly hopped up
and pushed the button with his beak, but he was very little, so his breast
pressed against the bell, dampening the sound. When he stepped back, I rang the
bell again and his crest popped up and he hopped up to try it again, but again
the sound was dull. I showed him how it worked a few more times, but then Russ
and I went to another room to watch TV. Maybe 20 minutes or a half hour later,
we heard a clear “Ding!” A few seconds later, we heard another “Ding!” and then
a “Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” I went running in to see Ludwig hitting the button
over and over as he hovered, wings beating furiously, above it. He seemed very
pleased with himself, and especially pleased that we had witnessed his
accomplishment. After that, he pretty much lost interest in the bell. I kept it
on the table, and every now and then he’d notice it and fly up to ring it once
or twice, but he had moved onward and upward.
There are no evolutionary advantages whatsoever conferred on
a bird for mastering bell ringing. But curiosity, tenaciousness, figuring out
cause and effect, and keen observational skills are excellent qualities for an
opportunistic omnivore, be it a Blue Jay or a human being. The longer and more
closely that I observed Ludwig, the more I grew to understand that Blue Jays
exemplify the very best of what an intelligent, sociable species can be.
II
The little Blue Jay I called Ludwig thrived. But being
raised by a human instead of a Blue Jay family meant his education was
different from what a normal Blue Jay would have. The first time Ludwig took a
bath in my kitchen sink, he soaked himself so thoroughly that each flight
feather became a sodden, stringy, heavy mess. He hopped up to the edge of the
sink with no problems, but when he tried to fly across the room to the table,
he dropped to the floor like a rock.
I picked him up on my finger and he stayed put while drying off. It took
half an hour of preening to get his feathers back into flying condition.
I had learned that there was no way I’d qualify for a permit
to keep him permanently, so right when he was starting to take short flights, I
started taking him outdoors so he could learn some of the skills he’d need to
become independent. It was of course terrifying the first time I set him on a
bush—what if he flew off and I never saw him again? How would he survive? I
realized that parent birds are way, way better at keeping track of their
fledglings, and are ever so much more able to reach them in high trees, than I
could possibly be. Fortunately, fledglings also do keep track of their parents,
and the first week or so, Lugwig never strayed far from me. When I couldn’t stay
out with him, he’d happily come inside with me, at least at first. As he got a
bit more independent, especially after he discovered mulberries in the back of
the yard and delectable fruits further away in the neighborhood, sometimes he
didn’t want to come in with me. I was more and more feeling like Samantha on
the show “Bewitched,” when she’d call, “Mother! Mother!” into the bushes,
making her neighbors think she was crazy. Calling “Ludwig!” seemed if anything
even more bizarre, though really, calling to a living, breathing Blue Jay seems
a bit less ludicrous than calling to a witch, at least in the part of the planet I come
from. Sometimes I’d be forced to leave him out—when he was ready to come in, he’d
look through our apartment windows until he saw us and pecked at the glass to
catch our attention. He was starting, at long last, to make Blue Jay
vocalizations. Whenever he wanted me, he’d make a squawk that sounded like “Ma!
Ma!”
One time a huge storm blew in while Ludwig was outside. As
the ominously dark clouds built up, I searched and called, but he didn’t come.
When the deluge started, I had to give up and go inside. Every lightning bolt
and blast of thunder made me more frantic. When the rain finally stopped, I ran
out and called for him. I couldn’t find him in my own yard or nearby, so I hopped
on my bicycle and started riding through the neighborhood, calling his name.
Finally, a few blocks away I found him, sitting on a telephone line directly above
a bus stop, feathers so plastered against his body that he didn’t look anything
like a blue jay—just a gray, sodden mass squawking “Ma! Ma!” A dozen people
were waiting for the bus as I pulled my bike to a stop. That was back when I
still clung to a shred of a sense of dignity, and felt my face grow hot as I
called, “C’mon down, Ludwig!” He dropped like a rock, fortunately onto the slim
patch of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. He hopped up to me yelling,
“Ma! Ma!” as the people stared and laughed.
Thanks to this spunky little Blue Jay, my sense of dignity slowly
dissolved. That radar system so desperately focused on any sign of disapproval
or ridicule makes it hard for people to follow their own lights. Some of us get
so wrapped up in self-consciousness that we forget that absurdities creep into everybody’s
life. I think we need to outgrow it to become genuine human beings, which
intriguingly, means being able to live more like Blue Jays. That was one of the
important lessons I took from those magical days with a Blue Jay named Ludwig.
III
During the wonderful summer of 1979 that I spent with a baby
Blue Jay named Ludwig, one morning I found a bright red little
rubber-band-powered propeller in my Rice Krispies. I wound it up and up shot
the propeller—Ludwig was spellbound as it floated through the air; he suddenly
took off after it, grabbing it in midair. I called, and he brought it to me.
That’s how we learned to play a fun game of fetch. It was even more fun
outdoors without walls or ceiling to get in the way. Over and over I’d shoot it
up and he’d race after it and bring it back. Once, though, when I shot it off, it
landed on our apartment building’s slanted roof. He flew up to retrieve it, but
the moment he landed on the hot roof tiles, he keeled over on his side. His
crest went up, one wing and his tail spread out, his beak opened, and I thought
he was having a seizure. I called but he didn’t move. In a panic, I rushed to
the basement where our landlord kept a ladder, lugged it out, and climbed up to
the roof. I’m scared of heights, but didn’t even think of that as I rushed
toward him. But right as my hand reached out to grasp him, he shook his head,
stood up, grabbed the propeller, and flew onto my shoulder as if asking what
was I so worried about?
That was the first I learned about sunning. Many birds get
into this posture on hot, sunny days. This innate behavior raises the
temperature of a bird’s skin and feathers, and is possibly done in order to
banish some parasites. Over the years I’ve seen many birds sun bathing, but this
first time, before I understood it, I was petrified thinking Ludwig was dying.
Ludwig had a collection of toys that he stored in a little
ceramic cup. I gave him some shiny buttons, a rubber band, that Rice Krispies
propeller, and an old ring. Now and then he’d fly to the cup and take out his
treasures one by one, arranging them in a line, and then put them all back into
the cup. Once in a while, he’d fly off with one and hide it somewhere. Once he
wedged a button in the crevice between the window frame and the sash, and we had
to work it out with a screwdriver before we could open the window.
One day I brought home some sunflower seeds and gave Ludwig
a few. He tucked them away with his other toys, not realizing they were food. A
few days later I bit one open and ate the seed in front of him, then cracked
open another and gave him the seed. He was thrilled! Years later, when we first
gave our children Starburst candy, they were thrilled that each piece came in a
colorful wrapper—after that they always called Starburst “present candy”
because of the wrapping. That reminded me of how Ludwig loved sunflower seeds
for the packaging as much as for the seed magically hidden inside.
A family of Blue Jays lived somewhere near us, and whenever
Ludwig found himself on their territory, the adults would chase him off,
sometimes following him a ways. He quickly discovered that they were afraid of
me, and occasionally actually seemed to taunt them to get them to chase him
into our yard, where he’d alight on my head and turn to face them defiantly. As
their babies grew more independent, the adults grew more tolerant of Ludwig.
By summer’s end, he was spending most nights outside and only
once or twice a day coming into our yard. The last day I saw him was the last
day of summer vacation. I thought about him whenever I saw a Blue Jay,
wondering if each one could be Ludwig. When Russ and I were in Chicago during
spring vacation, a warm breeze floated into Madison. Our next-door neighbor was
out sunning herself when she spotted a Blue Jay alight on each of our apartment
windows, peeking in and tapping on the glass. He landed on her lawn chair and
studied her a bit, and then tried the windows once more, and finally flew off.
I felt so sad when she told me I’d missed him, but so joyful to know that he’d
survived the winter. He had a whole rich life ahead of him. Now, over three
decades later, I still feel a quiet joy knowing that even as he was leading his
life as a proper Blue Jay should do, he kept in his mind a little memory of me.
