뒷뜰얘기 3 – Saving a Raven chick

뒷뜰얘기 3 – Saving a Raven chick

Croak! Croak! Croak!
One late spring afternoon, a loud croaking noise beat my ears. The noise sounded coming quite close which made me dash out to check on. An unexpected sight caught my eyes that a raven was constantly fluttering and croaking in panic in the middle of my garden floor. In curiosity, I approached it gingerly to see what was going on but it didn’t fly away. I initially thought it landed on the ground out of injury that prevented from flying. But I soon noticed that it was a full size chick and fell of it’s nest somewhere near my garden.
It’s safety was my first concern as other animals in the garden could easily harm it especially at night, so I ungently found a cardboard box and put it in. The next task was to find some earth worms and caterpillars to feed it. I put them in the box but the chick wasn’t touching them so I used a pair of chopsticks to pick them up and luckily it began to eat a bit by bit from the chopsticks. When the sun went down, I put the box in the garage and just prayed it would get through over the night without any issue. Next morning, my first move was to check the chick in the garage. As soon as I opened the door, the loud croaking came through and I was very happy to hear that with a sigh of relief. After feeding it the breakfast, I went back inside my house for some chores. 
Around lunch time, the noise croaking aired even louder. I realised this time, it wasn’t the chick’s solo but trio which, again, made me dash out to the garden. Wow, there were two huge ravens were hovering in the air and croaking desperately and the chick in the box was replying mad to the others call. It was clear that the chick’s parents have just found their missing chick and came to rescue which was a quite an amazing sight I came across.
I almost immediately took the chick out of the box and left in the middle of the lawn and stayed away to watch. The chick again kept fluttering and making desperate calls to it’s parents but clearly unable to fly. Apparently some safety reason, the frantic parents were not willing to come down to join their chick.
I got stuck first, “What else should I do to help them?” Then, an idea came up with another plan. Although the chick was in trouble flying, I had no choice and decided to put the chick on the roof of my house where was safer and freer for them get closer one another. This rescue mission was certainly trickier than I had thought in using a ladder. First, I grabbed the wailing chick, climbed the ladder and left it on the roof. They say, the raven/ crow have the highest IQ in the bird world and also at the top table throughout the whole animal range. So I deemed they might work the situation out themselves.
I went back to the lounge to give them space and waited there. Soon after their noisy chorus stopped and I went out to investigate the outcome. Voila, the chick raven was gone and so were the parents in the air. I checked around my house in case, it fell off the roof but it was all clear.
It is of course, that the parents could not take the chick with them physically. I just gathered that they fed the chick well first and encouraged it to fly with them. The chick of course, was able to fly off with extra energy and confidence under its parents tender care and watch. I was so glad that my little help gave them a happy family reunion.