The summer of 2014, my parents and our foreign exchange student, Nami, went on a trip to Japan so that she could introduce them to her parents and so that they could get a tour of her home-country. I stayed behind partly because I was uninterested in going to Japan and partly because I was baby-sitting the dog and cat. Two days before they left, we had a big storm, and the next day, my dad was outside picking up after the storm when he called to me to come outside. I came out and found a baby sparrow just a few days or so old–not alot of feathers and its eyes were still closed–in its nest which had been knocked out of the tree by the storm. Upon seeing that it’s parents were nowhere in sight and that we had dogs and cats who roamed freely throughout the neighborhood, I took the baby sparrow–I didn’t know at the time that’s what it was because it didn’t have all its feathers–and its nest and put them in a small cardboard box lined with some newspaper, and took it inside. With some mushy cat food soaked in water I fed the baby sparrow with a chopstick. A couple days after I’d rescued it, its eyes opened and soon after it had all its feathers. I “named” the sparrow “Buddy”, just because it sounded right. Though I never intended to name it at all. Buddy soon grew out of wet cat food, and also took his first flight….straight out of his box when I picked it up to move it back to my bedroom. He luckily landed on his feet. Then and there I went to the pet store, taking Buddy with me since I knew he’d try to escape again. I bought a bird cage, wood shavings for the bottom of his cage, some worms, and bird seed. Once back home, I put him into his new cage. That first morning that he had his new cage, he woke me up promptly at 7AM, with insistent chirping. And so over the next days, Buddy learned to fly in his new bird cage (and in my room with the door closed of course), and he ate the worms that I fed him and I soon went back for more, but he wasn’t into the bird seed at all. And every single day after that first day in his cage he always woke me up promptly at 7AM with his insistent chirping. Almost every hour I was feeding him worms–a demanding little bugger 🙂 . My parents and Nami were gone for two weeks on their trip to Japan. Those two weeks of taking care of Buddy until he was old enough to take care of himself had him flying on to my finger and perching there and nibbling gently at my finger. My parents and Nami got back from Japan and two days later, I released Buddy into the backyard by the birds’ waterbowl where the other sparrows always were. My mom said that the next day she saw a small sparrow hopping around with its beak open, chirping for food. That would be my little Buddy. He has so much character. I would love to get a pet bird some day.