The Bird Hospital

by Caroline Crowninshield Bascom

They like to have me play with them by throwing the water at them, just as Cady did, and, if I sing and keep time by rapping the dish, Bob will sing with me.

Bob would take a bath twice a day if I would let him, but Bobbinette sometimes does not take one for two or three days. You see she got into bad habits the weeks she went without.

It had rained most of the time before Bobbinette and Bobby came to the hospital to live, and no doubt they had been soaked to the skin many times. When it was too late, I found I ought not to have let them bathe, for they both had bad colds. I did not know what the matter was until they began to cough, sneeze, and make all sorts of disagreeable noises. They would have driven any one who was nervous about wild, and they really annoyed me, who am not, and kept me awake many nights. I had never had birds act as they did, for they were different from a bird with the asthma. Some of my friends who knew about chickens said they had the “pip,” others the “gapes,” and told me to do this, that, and the other thing, but they kept growing worse instead of better. Finally I wrote to my old standby, George Holden, and asked what to do, as I felt it was high time to have a good counsel. They had already been eating his bird food. He wrote to me: “Do not pay any attention to the noise the robins make, add more carrot to their food, give them plenty of green food, and let them have all they want to eat; keep them warm, and they will come out all right.” I followed his advice, and, after many trying weeks, they entirely recovered. This case was the longest, except Teddy’s, the hospital ever had.

When Bobby moulted, his feathers came in as fast as they came out, but Bobbinette must have had a high fever, for, when some of hers came out, no new ones came in. From her shoulders to the top of her head she did not have a feather for two months. She would scratch her head and pick her wings most of the time.

One day I looked her over carefully, and found the under part of her wings red and inflamed, while on the top of her head was a crust similar to the milk crust babies have.

I immediately rubbed dry sulphur all over her head and under parts of her wings, and kept it up for two weeks. By the time it was warm weather, and their colds seemed cured, I let them have their bath again, and how much they enjoyed them only they can tell. Then the crust began to leave Bobbinette’s head, as well as all of her crest feathers, until only three remained, and for weeks no new ones came in. It was very amusing, when Bobbinette became very angry and began to scold, to see those three feathers stand straight up as proud as if there were three dozen.

Bobby is always dignified and rarely loses his temper or ruffles his plumage, while Bobbinette very often gets mad, scolds you, strutting about with breast feathers all puffed out, and the feathers on her head standing up and her tail going like a little wren. If Bobby is taking a drink of water, and Bobbinette wants some, she never says, “By your leave,” or waits a second, but coolly takes him by the feathers of his head and puts him away, and takes possession of the water. But Bob is much more destructive than Bobbinette. They eat off of pretty Vantine china, and drank their water out of thin whiskey glasses until Bob broke four by taking them up in his bill and dropping them down on his bath-dish to hear them make a ringing sound. Now I make them use a little earthen jar, that is good and strong, and only favour them with a glass to drink their milk out of when they go down to the parlour for their singing lesson.

One day Bob took a lovely china pin-tray off of my dressing-table and threw it on the floor, breaking it in many pieces. Another day I found him out in the hall with my string of gold beads, shaking them as if he thought they were an angleworm. He had bitten two beads until they were almost flat. Like many small boys, he thinks matches are about the nicest things to play with, and I often find them thrown in all directions.

Dona Marina’s kittens had been given away before they were old enough to take much notice of Blondell, but her new kittens, Blonde and Brunette, lived with the birds many weeks. Blonde was white with tortoise-shell markings, and twice as large as Brunette, who was just like her black mother.

Blonde was gentle in all of her ways, while Brunette was just the opposite. Blonde would wake me in the morning by gently tapping my cheek with her big, soft white paw. Brunette would come with a rush and land on the top of my head. I did not have the least trouble in teaching Blonde not to spring at the birds, but I had a great deal with Brunette before I could make her understand that she was not to slap them with her tiny black velvet paw.