Mark carried the box into the shop, we gave it water that had a pastille of Rescue Remedy in it, and he moved her to a larger box. He discovered that it had an injury to its chest and was breathing with difficulty. Stephanie, the rescuer, walked in and said she was on her way to deliver it to the Wildlife Rescue Center on Candelaria. Before she left, Mark asked if I wanted to “do my magic”, and put the box on the counter.

 *we were so invested in the experience that none of us thought to take a picture. This image is from hdnicewallpapers.com.

​The bird was calm through all of this, and I wasn’t worried as I put my left hand on her chest and the other on her back. Very quickly she began leaning into my hand, and after a few minutes, she turned her head, tucked it up against my hand and her “shoulder” (for lack of a better description)…and FELL ASLEEP! In my hands! I asked the others how to tell if a bird is asleep, because I wanted to be sure that what I thought was happening really was happening, and they verified that she was sleeping. I was floored. And the moment she fell asleep, the heat in my right hand intensified exponentially: healing always seems to do its best work when the recipient is sleeping. 🙂

My guy and I drove down to the center Wednesday morning to check up on the bird, but sadly she had died the night before. I was, and still am, crushed. But, as everyone keeps telling me, I gave her some moments of peace in the midst of all her pain, so there’s that to hold on to.

Then….two nights later I discovered that what all the neighbors thought was someone’s squeaky swamp cooler belt was actually a trapped woodchuck! It was stuck in a 4″ wide space between our neighbor’s shed and our cinder-block wall. It had been there and under the shed for about a week, sad to say. I’d gone outside Monday morning when the noise started again, and I discovered it was his shed, not a cooler, but thought it was a ventilation fan or something, and didn’t see him to mention it til Wednesday night. After we discovered the animal, one of our dogs must have knocked a loose top stone brick off the wall and it trapped it even more. My guy and another neighbor used long clamps to lift the brick, but they couldn’t move the other items in the way and we had to leave it there, unsure if it would make it through another night.

I sent it light for over half and hour (and boy, it sucked that energy in!), hoping that it would help. In the morning it was chirping away as we tried to move the rest of the items, but it needed to be done from our neighbor’s yard. When he returned home, he and his wife pulled out some of the items, then he physically lifted large brick that was stuck about 4′ down. Finally all obstacles were removed, but the critter still wouldn’t move, and kept looking at us, chirping away.

My guy, the incredibly inventive man that he is, made a catch-pole like Animal Control uses and our neighbor managed to pull the critter up and dropped it into a humane cage that he had.