Little Suburb Creatures

This last week or so has been one where we seem to attract little suburb animals like Snow White does the woodland creatures. 

Earlier last week John and I went for a walk around our neighborhood. We passed one house on the way where some children were playing outside with their dog (who was not on a leash). As we walked past the house, the dog started to follow behind us and then pretty much stayed within five feet of us as we continued our walk. The dog wouldn't listen to the children as they called her and tried to get her to come home. She clearly wanted to stay with us, but that was one sided. The dog walked with us for about six blocks or so, until we got to our house. We left the dog outside, and she decided to play with the kids that were playing across the street. The next day we saw the dog running back down our street. A neighbor across the street saw her too, and knows the owners of the dog, they called the dog to them and took her back to her rightful place. We haven't seen her wandering around since. (Sorry, no pictures!)

On Saturday, I came home from running an errand, and I notice a gray fluffy thing under the siding of our front porch in the corner near our front door. After putting things inside, I came back out to see what it was. It was a young bird (Mourning Dove of some sort maybe?), and it was still breathing!
The bird stayed there for quite a while. I'm not sure if it was there before I left the house in the early afternoon, or not. Close to the dinner hour (several hours later) I went back outside to wait for John, and must have kicked a leaf in it's direction or accidentally bumped it with my shoe or something, because it struggled out of the corner and kind of pathetically flapped (or tried to flap) it's wings as it scurried a few feet from the corner.
The poor bird looks sick - missing feathers on the head, and an unhealthy looking beak. The bird decided to take refuge in the far corner of our porch near the railing for the rest of the evening.

When we got home from church the next day, there were three birds on our porch. The young sickly bird, a healthy young bird, and then an adult bird. The adult bird only stuck around Sunday, but these last three days it has only been the two young birds.

Both young birds. Healthy on left, sickly on right.

Today, only the young healthy bird is sticking around on our porch. We aren't sure what has become of the sickly bird, since it's not anywhere to be seen on or near the porch.



Snow White Picture Credit