Re: Desktop icons sometimes move (NOT auto arrange problem) at startup

Rhonda Lea Kirk <rhondalea@xxxxxxxxx>, the infectious-transient and
three-legged mollycot who likes inhuman liaisons with seagulls, and
whose partner is a smut-*** with a messy glory road, wrote in
<4fgvk7F1hmbmnU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Banned Apache wrote:

A couple of years ago I saved a number of blue-tit babies from
certain death. They were little pink things, about the size of my
thumbnail. I kept them warm by putting them on top of my computer
screen but had to keep taking them off the boil before they cooked,
then they had to go back up before they got too cold. I also managed
to feed them warmed soya milk. Some vet quack, tosser told me that
wouldn't have helped and would have run straight through them. I
maintain it was the feeding that warmed them through originally and
saved the little bastards.

The fatality rate for young birds in the wild is about 75%, but it
increases by quite a bit when you're trying to hand-rear them.

Soy milk is great stuff. I had a lot of trouble with mourning doves
until I started using it, and then their survival rate shot right up.

The only trouble with feeding birds liquids is that they have no
epiglottis, and if you're not careful, you'll give them pneumonia. For
most songbirds, I feed a mixture of canned dogfood, farina and
applesauce, although when they're really tiny, I use baby food
instead. The addition of soymilk makes it stick to the paintbrush
better, as well as adding a lot of good nutrients.

Of course, with the morning doves, you feed it almost straight
(depending on their age--as they get bigger, you add baby cereal)
using a large syringe or turkey baster.

Obviously, you didn't drown the little birds, so I think the vet was
an idiot, because warming them up quickly and getting food in them
increases their chances of survival exponentially.

How old were they when you let them go?

A day older than they were when I saved them, I let the vet woman take them
to a nearby bird sanctuary to join dozens of similarly orphaned twitters.

Maybe they just liquidised them and fed them to something bigger, I hope
not.



When I did it for a living (not much of a living, I might add), I had
some good vets on call in case of emergencies, but my experience with
vets in general is they wanted to put it down, whatever "it" happened
to be. Mostly I only used them when a critter needed to die, unless
it was suffering, in which case I just did it myself.

The cat that ate both the parent birds disappeared shortly
afterwards, I had nothing to do with it, unless the cat was extra
sensitive to hateful vibes.

That's why people should keep their cats inside, not to mention that
it's much better for the cat. People always dumped their unwanted pets
near our house when I was a kid, and although we fed them, they stayed
outside. Even with as little traffic as we had on our road, we still
had an all too high rate of roadkill.

Kitties that live indoors don't get diseases and they can satisfy
their natural instincts by taking out the mice who haven't the sense
to stay outside.

Anyway, I reckon if you lob the attacked cat up towards the branch
the bird is on then the bird may go into attack mode and follow the
cat back down. You might consider juggling some oranges first so you
can be confident about catching the cat and the bird.

HTH

I used to juggle a little, but I don't expect it's like riding a
bicycle. I suspect that if I toss the cat in the tree, it will end up
impaled on a branch. That's my experience of how such ideas work out,
anyway.

The birdlet did eventually come down for food, and it's flying around
the room right now. It's nice, really, because I've been tied to
feeding it every twenty minutes or so for the past two weeks, which
means I've been unable to do anything at all but read and hang
online. Now that it's stopped raining, I'm glad to get outside, even
if I'm still pretty much trapped on the patio.

Suntan time, I guess.

rl




--
Lunch was nice;
Underdone hobo's nose hairs accompanied with snafued live rat embryos
accompanied by spoilt clitoris on top of burnt out snot-nosed cow
puddings and apple garnish accentuated by desecrated hobo's nose hairs,
cooked in a cooling cup filled with raw cauliflower, spicy scraps of
pork, sour cream, a side of Foetal rottweiler brain and a bucket of
possum slobber.


.