Meepling

I received two Zebra Finches for my birthday a few months ago. They make a little meeping noise, so I named the male Meep and the female Meepette. Once they got to know each other a little better, they started a family.

Unfortunately, the babies died.

The next time Meepette laid eggs, she laid four, one more than last time.

Unfortunately, the babies died — again.

I didn't know why.

I thought it was cruel to let them keep having babies only to have the babies die.

I researched it. I could take the house out. They don’t actually need a house to sleep in. They can sleep perched on a perch. But if they’re really determined to have babies, they’ll turn one of the food cups into a nesting box. I’d need to invest in a different kind of feeder — the tube feeders, which I could do. There’s another consideration though. Sleep is important to birds. Many times through the day Meep and Meepette go into their little house (the opening is turned away from the light), and it’s dark enough that they nap. If I took the house out, they wouldn’t be able to do that.

Maybe they’ll get the hang of being parents, I consoled myself and left things as they were.

The third clutch yielded the same results — but I still had high hopes!

A couple of weeks ago they laid five eggs!

One afternoon Meep and Meepette both came out of the house and announced the birth of their offspring to the world. Okay, okay! To me. They announced it to me. They don’t meep very loud.

I looked in the house and saw two little mouths open and waiting to be fed.

I watched Meep and Meepette and at first I thought they were going to take care of them. Meep was in the food dish, then flew to the house. Unfortunately, that one trip was all I saw him make.

After a couple of hours of paying attention, I was pretty sure they weren’t feeding the babies. Now I knew why they were dying!

I Googled it. It said that even hand-raising them, the chances are they’ll die anyway. But if you’re gonna try, just know that they need to be fed every twenty minutes throughout the day for the first couple of days. You don’t have to feed them at night. Use a dropper and feed them a drop at a time.

I took the nesting formula, ground it as fine as my grinder would grind it, mixed it with warm water, and fed the babies. They were hungry.

It didn’t take me long to determine that after fifteen minutes they were still sleeping. I stretched it out to half an hour.

A third baby emerged that afternoon.

I didn’t know if they would survive the night, but they did and this morning I have four hungry little mouths to feed.

At first, I tried to feed them while the house hung in the cage. I was getting food all over the babies!

An image of someone hand-feeding a baby while holding it in their hand flashed in my mind’s eye.

I’m a little afraid I’ll drop the house. I did that once long ago before the advent of any eggs. But for the sake and ease of feeding the babies, I decided to take a chance. It’s so much easier to feed them when I dump them out on a towel. Of course, all the crap from inside the nest comes out, too, and the lone unhatched egg.

I didn’t especially want to care for babies, but I couldn’t bear to watch them die — not when I could do something about it. We shall see how long I can keep them alive. After this, no more babies! I’ll have to take out the house, buy different feeders, AND get a cover for the cage.

Hands down, the biggest failure of the week, the one that takes the cake, the failure of all failures, is Meep and Meepette. They are total and complete failures at being parents.

The sunrise was beautiful the morning four baby Zebra Finches hatched. The fifth baby hatched two days later. It was hard to believe how much the babies had grown just in the course of two days. In my hand are two little babes. Can you see the difference?

Tuesday, I lost two babies.

Then I lost a third one. I don’t remember what day that was.

I was left with the newborn and an older one.

It was bad enough that Meep and Meepette weren’t feeding the babies, it got worse when all of the babies were hatched and they weren’t even keeping them warm. I took them out of the nest for a feeding and they were cold to the touch.

How am I going to keep them warm‽ I wondered.

And the only thing I could think of was to put them next to my skin. I cradled them in a gauze square and tucked ‘em down in my bra pocket. You know, the space between my girls. That’s a euphemism for my breasts. Every time I had to bend down or bend over, I had to clutch my front so they didn’t tumble out.

Those stinkers. It didn’t take them long to scoot themselves around until they were between my breast and my bra. I repositioned them several times, but they just kept going back. I don’t know if it was the warmth or the security that drew them. I just gave up and let them be where they wanted to be.

Unfortunately, when I pulled them out to feed them, the littlest baby was dead — warm, but dead. I don’t know if he suffocated, or got pinched by a fat roll when I bent over to pick something up, or if I broke his neck clutching my front, or if I did it when I took him out. However it happened, he was gone.

I felt bad.

And I didn’t want it to happen again.

Don’t laugh at the solution this dumb butt came up with. In fact, when I was telling my friend Jody about it, I laughed at the ridiculousness of it so hard tears streamed from my eyes and rolled down my face.

What if I put something over him to keep me from breaking his neck? Of all the ways he could've died, I still thought it likely it was my fault.

My turtle shell that fits inside my face mask came to mind but it was too big to fit inside my bra.

I took a little cup from the cupboard, tucked a piece of cloth inside and popped the little dude in my bra so he could lay against my skin.

About four minutes later a horrifying thought pops into my head.

How’s he gonna breathe‽

Quickly I pulled him out. He took a huge breath and lay still.

I killed him!

“Come on!” I said and poked him. He took another breath and was still. “You can do it,” I encouraged and started CPR. Can you imagine! There I was, feeling like the lowest of the low, scum of the earth even, because he wouldn’t be dead except for my stupidity.

“I really didn’t think it through,” I told Jody.

There I stood, at my kitchen counter, with a half or mostly-dead baby bird cupped in my hand and I’m tapping his little chest with my index finger, poking him, rolling him over.

I was mimicking the motions as I told Jody the story.

I stopped poking long enough to see if he was breathing. He took another breath, wiggled a wing, then was still again. I kept up the tapping and poking at him, rolled him over then back again, more taps, then I got really close and exhaled a big breath on him.

It was at this point in telling the story that I lost it. I could only imagine what Jody must think of an old woman giving mouth-to-mouth to a four-day-old baby bird.

Honestly, it was all I could think of to do.

That and pray.

I know! I know! It’s silly to pray over a baby bird that doesn’t have much of a chance of living anyway but I know that God cares for all of His creation — and that includes birds.

I’d stop every ten seconds or so to see how he was doing. After a couple of minutes, he took a breath, then another, then another.

He was breathing!

Then he started flopping around.

I never felt so relieved, and thankful, in all my life.

I need to keep him safe and warm, rattled around in my head for a couple of hours. Then, what temperature does he need?

I started typing in the search on my phone. It has intuitive words that will pop up as you type so oftentimes you don’t even have to finish writing a word before the right one pops up, then you choose it.

What temp to keep baby... I typed. When I hit z I had to laugh at the suggestions that came up. Zombies. Who wants to know what temperature to keep baby zombies at? I finished with Zebra Finches.

Different websites tell you different things. One said 85 to 90 another said 90 to 96. So I figured 80 to under 100 should work. The only thing I have that’s low temp is a yogurt maker. Plus it has a lid so the cats won’t get him. Google says the temperature for making yogurt is 98 to 109 degrees. So that’s maybe a little too hot for my baby. But maybe I could put a bowl and towel in and keep him off the bottom. And I’ll get my husband Mike to drill holes in the top to vent the heat.

The next thing I needed was a thermometer. I have several different thermometers in the house that would fit inside the yogurt maker. A refrigerator thermometer, a people thermometer, and a meat thermometer. The refrigerator thermometer only goes to 80. The people thermometer starts at 95.5. The meat thermometer had the best range.

I set the yogurt maker up, put the refrigerator and people thermometers inside, put the lid on, slid the meat thermometer in one of the holes Mike made, and waited an hour.

It was over a hundred.

Maybe if I keep it off the bottom, I think.

I swapped out the bowl for a large steamer basket.

It worked great until I put the lid on. Then it was too hot.

I swapped out the steamer basket for a splatter screen.

“Move the lid off the side,” Mike suggested. “Then it’ll draw cool air.”

The fridge thermometer said it was over 80. The meat thermometer said it was 86.

Perfect!

I put the baby in. He snuggled up to a fold in the cloth and seemed happy.

I checked him after twenty minutes or so and he seemed fine.

Forty-five minutes later, when I went to feed him, he had scooted himself halfway across the screen, his mouth was open, panting, his little wings were held away from his body, all the signs that he was too hot!

I snatched the lid off, grabbed my hand-held fan, and started fanning him. Once he had cooled off some, I gave him a cool drink.

Trying to figure out a brooder for Meepling was an all-day adventure and ultimately, a wasted day.

“Meepling?” you say.

Yep. That beautiful Jenn Kipp came up with that, and I love it.

That night I put Meepling back in the house and the house back in the bird cage. It didn’t take long for Meep and Meepette to go in.

The next morning, Mike was up an hour or so before me. The first thing I did was check on the birds. Meep and Meepette were out of bed, sitting on a perch. Usually, they don’t get up until after I turn on the kitchen light. I pulled my little ladder out, climbed the two steps, opened the door of the hanging cage, and took out the house. Meepling was cool to the touch but alive. I warmed him with my breath, then I warmed his food and fed him. I wiped his little face where I’d gotten food on him and tucked him into my bra pocket.

“Do you think they got up with you?” I asked Mike, but it was rhetorical, he wouldn't know.

I did more research on brooders.

“My dad used a light bulb and a box when he had chicks,” my feisty redheaded neighbor said.

And that was one of the things I saw online. I don’t even know if we have a bulb that’s not an LED. And Meepling is tiny. Maybe an inch and a half long, so I wouldn’t need a very big box, then figure out how to hook the bulb up and not get too hot and keep the cats out. All things that needed to be considered, and frankly, it seemed like a lot of work when I already had a consistent heat source readily available.

“You could buy one?” you say.

Nope and nope.

I don’t need nor do I want a bunch of baby birds. I wouldn’t mind one or two more but only if Meep and Meepette would do their jobs. Then I’d separate boys and girls so I wouldn't have more babies. If Meepling lives he can live in the cage with his parents, and I’ll take out the house and food cups so there’s no place to lay eggs.

“That little stinker keeps scooting himself around until he gets under my boob,” I told my handsome son when we talked this week.

“You could make a little pocket for him,” Kevin suggested.

A light bulb went off in my head. “Yes, I could!”

I cut some fabric and used my hot glue gun to do up the side seams. Now Meepling has to stay in his little pocket.

When I put Meepling to bed that night, Meep and Meepette went inside almost right away. I’m so glad because I can’t keep him warm at night. Before I went to bed, I checked on them. Nothing had changed, I hadn’t turned any lights on, but Meep and Meepette were NOT in the house. Instead, they were sleeping on the top rung of their ladder.

I worried all night.

I worried I’d have a baby ice cube when I got up.

Nonetheless, there was nothing I could do about it.

In the morning, Meep and Meepette were on the ladder, Meepling was cool to the touch but alive.

“You could make a rice sock and warm it in the microwave for him,” Jenn suggested.

That’s a great idea. I’ll have to let that one rattle around in my head.

All I’ve got to say is that after being abandoned by his parents, almost suffocated, and nearly cooked to death, this little guy has a strong will to live!