Epic, inspiring bird rescue hero Michelle posted this to Mickaboo‘s list serve & I love it so much that I want to share it with you. Thank you, Michelle!
Guest Post by Michelle Yesney
CEO Retired, Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue (See Changing of the Guard)
This point in time – as Mickaboo is going through a cycle of too many birds and not enough homes for them – seems like a good time to share a realization I reached while I was still working full time. No matter how demanding your job is, you need something else in your life. If you work with your brain, caring for a living animal with your hands becomes a great and wonderful gift.
When I discovered Mickaboo and first adopted, and then fostered, birds, “working full time” meant routine 60+ hour work weeks, constant stress, competing demands between work/life and home/life. You know – your “ideal” Silicon Valley lifestyle.
My first fosters were three splay-legged baby budgies whose treatment included confinement in paper cups that required 24-hour supervision. I took off from work for the first week (at that point I literally had months of unused accumulated vacation and sick time). After the first week, I took the baby birds to work with me for a few days. Fortunately, at that point I had a private office — a “real” office with walls and a door I could close.
Please believe me, I did NOT stop working and did not reduce my workload. I worked at a company with a high regard for humane values, and everyone accepted the presence of crippled baby birds in my office. I worked for eight more years, including work on some of the most complex and difficult projects of my career. It was rare for me to bring birds into the office (that first example was unique), but I did a lot of volunteer work during that time, including fostering what I estimate to have been approximately 150-200 birds.
The reason I’m providing all this detail is to make a very salient point – I realized almost immediately that rescuing birds (caring for them, rehabilitating damaged and injured birds, finding them homes) was a healthy counterpoint to my high stress, physically demanding “real” job. Cleaning those 3 baby budgies 2 or 3 times a day, bandaging their legs, making sure they were eating, used a different set of “muscles” and a different part of my brain and heart.
For 8-12 hours a day I sat in front of a computer, sat in contentious or demanding meetings, stressed over deadlines and public controversies, negotiated with government agencies and technical experts, read and reread lengthy documents, and worried about multiple deliverables. To be able to go home and care for three damaged budgies, and watch them grow into sweet companion birds, was a gift. It wasn’t “time off”, it was time spent in a different dimension.
My message to all of you is this: don’t wait until you “have time” to foster and rescue (more) birds. Don’t put it off until you have retired or your life slows down. Give yourself the gift of being a whole person; use the kindness, the compassion, the generosity you already possess in your “spare time”. Fit it in around the busy life you already lead. Up until I discovered Mickaboo, I had no idea how much more life my days could hold.
awhile on boughs too slight,
feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings,
knowing she hath wings.
Read about Palomacy’s beginning as MickaCoo Pigeon & Dove Rescue
