Bringing up baby

Brad and I have always been animal lovers, thankfully that's just one of the many things we have in common.

About four months ago we added a foursome to our menagerie of pets. This time is was the feathered version -- canaries. We decided to try breeding them. Our first hatch, we had one successful egg. The second time around, we had three.

The only problem was when the male died shortly before the eggs hatched and left mama to do all the work. Then I noticed mama wasn't eating and was spending less and less time on the nest. She sat on the perch, with her feathers poofed out just like the male had done, right before he died.

My plan was to take the chicks out of the nest the next morning and give them to a surrogate who would happily take over the raising of the young'uns. Unfortunately, Mom didn't make it through the night and neither did two of her chicks.

I put the last of the three chicks with another female, but she would have nothing to do with it. I was about to become a surrogate bird mother.

We had started out with four birds, at somewhere around $100 each. We were down to three and a quarter. I had no intention of losing a $100 investment.

First of all, let me explain that I know nothing about birds -- except how to put seed and water in their cage and clean out their cages when they got dirty. I did a little reading -- as much as I possibly could in the little time I had to make sure our little investment remained alive.

Carrot juice, mixed baby cereal, and poppy seed, and honey seemed to be the main ingredients in most of the hand feeding formulas I came across. I haven't had baby cereal in the house for 20 years. I don't even know where to find carrot juice and I threw my 10-year-old poppy seed out when I renovated the kitchen.

I mixed some honey with some Malt-O-Meal and water and fed the hungry baby using the end of my pinky fingernail. I made a quick trip to Walmart and picked up the necessary ingredients. I still couldn't find the carrot juice so I bought baby carrot food.

Starting out my adopted baby was about the size of my of a cough drop and was nothing more than eyeballs and legs and it was balder than Brad. Now it's tripled in size and it's feathers are starting come in. Within another week it should be fully feathered and ready to fly.

That's when the problems will start. It's going to be hard chasing it all over the house trying to get it to take the food off the end of my fingernail.

And here I thought my child-rearing days were over.