Letters

You Never Know

Living in Corrales has taught me that you never know when Mother Nature can come across your path when you least expect it and stop you dead in your tracks.

One day as I was feeding my German Shepherd, Blitz, I came across the tree branch that kept scratching the top of my truck each time I brought it into the yard. I vowed to cut it down! I pulled the branch down and cut it as high up as I could reach.

To my amazement, a tiny (and I do mean tiny) little hummingbird bounded up from the tiny little nest so intricately crafted by its mother and landed on my gate. It clutched the strand of fence wire with amazing strength and would not move. I went about my tasks but kept checking on it every few minutes.

When my husband came home that evening, it was still holding on to the wire for dear life. We decided to coax it into a pet carrier and call Animal Control. I stood on one side of the fence with the pet carrier and he stood on the other side and gently poked it from the other side and it went in!

It was so adorable with its sad little eyes, long beak and pitiful tweets, that I wanted to keep it. I knew that doing so was not in its best interests, but I gave it a name anyway, Hum-Vee.

We tried to feed it, but it would not eat. We put him on top of an old refrigerator in the garage overnight with my German Shepherd as a roommate.

The next day we called Animal Control, and they came and took him, and along with him a piece of my heart. I brightened up when I heard that there was a lady in Corrales who rescued birds, and Frosty from Animal Control said that Hum-Vee was taking food and doing well as he was leaving.

Thank God there are people like Frosty and Mikal that take their valuable time to do work like this. They show others that even the smallest of creatures matters.

Frances La Bella
Corrales