No matter how exasperated a back might be, how can one turn theirs on a baby?

Baby Blue entered my life on Friday night. My husband and I sat outside, enjoying the warm, haze of twilight. One minute calm and tranquility, the next screeches and a flash of blue feathers with our cat clutching a bird in his jaws.

I caught the cat and smacked him on the back as Granny making Sylvester spit out Tweety.

Holding Baby’s wee panicked heaving chest of gray and blue fluff, I broke the bad news that he showed up on the wrong lady’s doorstep.

I didn’t know the first thing about baby bird care. Then he looked at me with those “Are You My Mother?” eyes.

Good grief.

I knew it was alright to touch him without fear the mother would reject him. Birds can’t really smell – which obvious by the fact that they dine on worms reeking of dirt and slime.

But they have beaks, talons and mites. My mother said if you pick up a bird’s feather covered in tiny bug beasties, you might as well kiss that hand goodbye. I wasn’t exactly sure what a mite is, though I imagined they must be an infinitesimal result of crossbreeding between lice and vampire bats. (Vampire bats with rabies.)

What if I got mites? What if he pecked my eyes out? What if he flew into my hair? What if his huge claw slashed my face?

There went my anxiety free weekend.

The bearer of my worries was a tuft of blue jay. Not surprising. I bet Ms. Robin had already phoned the Department of Children and Family Services Aviary Division. “Listen…I think it best you know, there’s another Blue Jay down.”

 Finding a box, I placed him in it and found a crook of a tree. I herded the cats in. After Baby made it through the night, most of my Saturday was spent checking on him. I tried digging for worms in the cement that a few short months ago was Georgia clay. Baby was not interested in eating a little yellow wormy thing we found. The more time I spent with him…my fears of bugs and talons subsided. The only remaining fear was that Baby wasn’t going to make it to fully grown annoying Blue Jay status.

I finally stumbled on a web site that explained the difference between nestlings and fledglings. Nestlings are your typical ugly-as-a-skinned-squirrel baby birds. Fledglings are juveniles who have been intentionally pushed from the nest by mom and dad. They can flutter, but not soar. They spend a week or so hopping about the ground learning to eat on their own and fly. All within earshot of mom, this period is a natural and important part of their development.

Normal until you insert gargantuan Homo sapien helicopter mom.

And I thought the Blue Jay mom was the slacker.

“LADY, just step away from the baby,” yelled Mama peering down from a branch in the fig tree. “You dingbat, quit messing with Junior. Busy yourself with keeping the whiskered black Satan inside and things will be fine.”

How was I to know Blue Jay parents can invest up to three months watching over their children once they leave the nest? Guess I’ve got a lot to learn about my feathered friends.

And all God’s Blue Jays screeched, “Amen.”