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[Rose]

What? No, that's stupid.

He has no mustache. Clearly a different person.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Years of playing with throw blankets has led me to master the art of wrapping myself in sheets, I am prepared to journey across the world!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[SalmonGod]

Years of playing with throw blankets has led me to master the art of wrapping myself in sheets, I am prepared to journey across the world!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think those are the exact same headphones my 8-year-old uses.

[Descan]

Eyebrows!

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I think those are the exact same headphones my 8-year-old uses.

jeez, those must be massive on your child's head, are your preparing them to wear a crown or something?

[SalmonGod]

I think those are the exact same headphones my 8-year-old uses.

jeez, those must be massive on your child's head, are your preparing them to wear a crown or something?

I guess they're not quite the same, but similar.  And a bit smaller.  But not too much.  He has a big head.

[Jopax]

It's like you have Japas 'stache but it's double and it's your eyebrows :O

Also Kael you look damnably similar to Feng Zhu :O

[miauw62]

With the powers of mustache, beard and eyebrows combined, we can defeat everything.

[Kadzar]

With the powers of mustache, beard and eyebrows combined, I am Captain Face Hair.

FTFY

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Our path is clear, we must establish the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemenbeards'

[Solifuge]

Some pictures and stories from the Bird Rescue:

Spoiler: Boris the Duck (click to show/hide)

We suspect Boris was a half-breed between a farm-raised Peking Duck, and a wild Mallard. Due to the cross-breeding, she was born with wings that were too small to fly with, yet she somehow wound up in the wild as an adult... maybe the farm had no use for her, and just released her. Anyway, she was ill equipped for survival, and when migration time came around she couldn't fly after her flock. We found her after someone hit her with a car, and brought her in with a broken leg.



She was super friendly, and liked being picked up by some of the staff. She wouldn't eat her greens, so I started putting them in her water bowl. We even arranged some swimming time for her with a large tote, waterproofing her cast in a few layers of plastic bags. She hopped in, and almost wouldn't leave.



Epilogue: Once her leg healed, we still couldn't release her into the wild... she couldn't fly with her tiny wings, and would never be able to survive a Winter. We arranged a home for her at the petting zoo across the street from my old apartment, where she remains.

Spoiler: Charles the Racing Pidgeon (click to show/hide)

We got a call from a factory owner downtown, who had birds in the rafters of their factory floor, which they "wanted removed". We explained to them that we don't really do that, and put them in touch with animal control. A few hours later, we get a call from an employee at the same factory, saying they had a series of injured, oil-covered birds that needed help. Apparently, the man we had spoken too didn't have the patience to call animal control, and decided to chase them off by spraying an industrial hose at them. I don't know the details, but somehow the birds were severely injured, and had been coated in grease. By the time they reached us, only one of the birds was still alive. Thankfully, he wasn't severely injured. We did our best to clean him up, and named him Charles.



We identified Charles as a Fancy Pidgeon, bred for appearances and racing. In fact, he had most likely been a racing bird seeking shelter in the factory, given the condition of his muscles, and the damaged plastic band on his leg. If the band had been intact, we would have been able to track down his owner and return the bird, but his ordeal had made it almost completely illegible. We continued to clean him up with Dawn Dish Soap (it really is good at breaking up grease!), force-feeding him (he didn't want to eat at first), keeping him company with a mirror (they like the company of other pidgeons, which we didn't have), and treating him with some antibiotics. Our director meanwhile started contacting people she knew in the Pidgeon Racing world, trying to track down the owner of the bird. He could have come from any state in the Midwest, or possibly even farther.



Epilogue: Though Charles cleaned up good, we were never able to find his owner. Releasing a domestic pidgeon into the wild would be a death sentence. Our director found a local man who raised pidgeons, and was interested in taking him in as a pet and possibly a racing bird, if he had the chops and training for it. Charles got himself a new leg band, and went home with him.

Spoiler: Nestling Songbirds (click to show/hide)

Most of our birds were baby songbirds which fell out of the nest. Half of the time they were either injured by a pet cat and/or taken in by the property owner and fed bread, or something equally bad. Generally they start off okay, and gradually get worse as their digestive tract grinds to a halt, though sometimes they're brought to us soon enough to help them recover. The other half of the time, they're fledgling birds, at a stage in their growth where they have to hop out of the nest and learn how to fly. People mistake their hopping around and fluttering as being injured, or too young to leave the nest, and mistakenly bring them to us. We give them a quick check-up, and do our best to send these birds back home, but complications always come up; the people were just dropping them off with us on their way to somewhere else, the owner has a cat they refuse to put inside for 2 days, and so on.



We try to set them up with other birds of their age, use absorbent bed pads to keep them from going all over the floor, and prepare high-protien foods for them, depending on their stage of development. Most baby birds, and adult birds we have to force feed, get a warm blend of meat-based baby food and water; the temperature is important. Juvinile birds may get seeds, chopped fruit, mealworms and waxworms, raw steak, chopped mice, and other things to supplement their diet, based on what they eat in the wild. We take an increasingly hands-off approach to feeding them, first manually feeding them their new food items, then letting them eat on their own, while still feeding them every so often, and eventually letting them feed themselves completely.



These Blue Jays are trouble. Don't let them fool you with their innocent looks. These guys discovered how to open their own enclosure, and take a fly around the facility when we were getting close to releasing them. We had to use nets to catch them in mid-air, and keep them from flying into the overhead lighting wires. They also pooped EVERYWHERE.

Never trust a Blue Jay.

Spoiler: Sandhill Crane (click to show/hide)

And then there was this guy. Juvenile Sandhill Crane, larger than a terrier, with a broken leg. We never named him, because he was huge, and had a terrifyingly long, sharp, stabby beak. Vet equipment for wild birds generally doesn't exist, so we had to invent and create a brace for his broken leg; our design was made of a series of metal bands attached by a straight crosspiece, which supported his long legs around the break, but also accommodated his big old bulbous knees. And we had to do it on our very small donations-only budget. Did I mention the non-volunteer specialists only earned minimum wage?



Though we only wore reinforced goggles and a smock to handle him when he was young, we upgraded to a welders mask, a leather apron, and gloves when he got older. That beak was a spear, and it could pierce flesh... as well as reasonably kill an adult human if it got them in the brain, via the eye socket. Crane don't mess around.



Epilogue: I don't know what became of the Crane. Once he was stable, healthy, and our brace was holding, we sent him off to another wildlife rehabilitation center that specializes in predatory birds. He was a beautiful bird, though.

[SalmonGod]

Awesome stuff, Soli.  Looks like a rewarding job.

[Anvilfolk]

Those were some pics worth watching, and stories worth listening to! Thanks

[Shook]

Oh man, Boris seems like the cutest duck ever. I should get me a pet duck. :v

also now for something completely different

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i now have a cool hat

[Dutchling]

That is one awfully cool hat.