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At sunrise, a Java sparrow sings her out of bed
"He's the light of my life," Carol says of Mr. Snuggles, the Java sparrow her family has had for almost two years. He started out as a tiny thing in the grass. more
Her husband found him at a neighbor's house, crawling through the wet grass. There was no nest and no sign of parents. Carol went back to look too, and she kept going back every day after she brought him home, still hoping to find his family.
Meanwhile he had to eat every hour or two, from sunrise to sunset. Somewhere in all that feeding came the realization that they were raising a bird, in a house that already had a cat. Maurice, another rescue, had to learn that the bird wasn't something to be played with. It took real work, and then Mr. Snuggles fell in love with Maurice.
He also had to learn to fly. Carol bribed him with his feeding syringe, which he was so attached to that he wanted it every time he saw it. "It worked," she says. "He's a fabulous flyer."
These days, at home in Hawaii, he has no cage. He spends the day in the house going wherever he likes, and he pulls the bunnies' whiskers while they eat. They look at him and sniff him a little, and they have never once turned on him. When Carol strokes him, his eyes close.
He brings friends, too. Carol feeds around 200 of them breakfast and dinner, and she can't tell one from another, but she doesn't have to. She makes a couple of clicks, and Mr. Snuggles perks up and answers.
At sunset the whole flock flies down to a valley below the houses to sleep in the trees together. Over the summer, Carol went down to find out which tree was his, and while she watched to see where he would land, he landed on her. They stayed together a while. Then, as it got dark, he flew up into the tree, his friends followed, and he started singing to her from the big trees.
SaveThat song took work. Because he had no family to learn from, Carol played him recordings of his kind singing, and it took him about three months to figure out his own.
Now he uses it on her. At sunrise he turns up in the tree outside her bedroom and sings until she gets out of bed. Every time he takes off, she says a little prayer that he stays protected and safe, and every morning there he is again.
