had a blah experience yesterday.
i was leaving my house and i saw some house sparrows look like they were fighting or rolling around the street. i then saw a sparrow try to move/pick up something, so i went to take a closer look. there was an injured sparrow, face down, on the street and it was breathing rapidly. i've never seen a bird lie face down, so i knew it was bad. the sparrow that i saw that was trying to pick it up was clearly distraught.
i went inside and found a shoebox and put on a latex glove. but i had a decision to make:
1. put it in the box and either let it die there?
2. put it in the box, call the city and know that there was zero priority for coming to put a house sparrow out of its misery?
3. break the bird's neck and end the suffering
my neighbour saw what i was doing and we both had a hard time deciding what to do. before i went to the bird, that other house sparrow had tried to pick up the injured bird and move it. i've never seen sparrows act like they care about anything other than depleting my feeder. so i approached the bird who, at this point, had spread one of its wings and looked like it had tried to fly. i put on the glove and decided how i was going to move the bird into the box. i put my hand underneath the bird and it didn't really respond negatively to what i was doing, which i took as a bad sign. i was deciding if i should put my hands on either side of its wings and pick it up from the top or try to get underneath. i decided to try to shovel it up from underneath and when i did, it tipped over to its side, let out one last breath, had a foot twitch and died. so maybe it had a broken neck and my movement put it out of its misery? who knows....
but yeah, playing god kind of sucks.
