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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chickadeedeedee" data-source="post: 1347009" data-attributes="member: 31336">My father built a wooden bird house for Purple Martins with eight apartments. Waaaay high up on a pole it stood and actually attracted the beloved birds for many years. Over time, the Weeping Willow tree grew larger and closer to the bird house and the Martins no longer came to nest.  Instead we had Starlings. Starlings galore! :t:  One summer I found a baby Starling under the bird house.  Ooooo! What a fall he had but he seemed uninjured. The ladders we had were far too short to reach the house so my father went to a neighbour's home and borrowed an expandable ladder.  He was a little (READ: A LOT) afraid of heights but the baby needed to be placed back. My father clung tightly to the ladder as he climbed holding a rope in his teeth.The rope was attached to a bucket and when he reached the house, the baby Starling was carefully placed in the towel lined bucket and he pulled the wayward chick up.OK. Now the question was ... From which apartment did he fall?!?!?  The babies in all the nests looked about the same size.  He quickly did a head count and placed the chick in the nest that seemed to be missing a child. :-OWe placed blankets under the bird house *in case* the chick or others would fall from their nests or if the replaced chick was tossed out because we intervened.No one was tossed or rejected but I spent a lot of time checking and rechecking the blankets and beyond to make sure no one was missed.  One day the babies fledged and the garden was filled with chubby Starling youngsters. I sat motionless under a tree and delighted in their antics as they explored their new world.  I remember a few fledglings running across the grass and coming quite near to me and I wondered which one was the one we had placed back in the nest.My father made another bird house which was quite large and was just for one nest.  It was placed up on a pear tree and we never had birds inside. It became a hospital room because if there was a sick or injured squirrel or opossum, they would move into this spacious protected house.  We had many wounded squirrels over the years who moved in and we would attend to their needs as best we could and allow them to remain outside. Food and water was provided for the guest on the "porch" of the house.  When the squirrel was well enough he'd leave on his own to rejoin his friends.We had a very sick opossum one summer in the house. He had been in a fight with something and was horribly wounded and ill. He allowed us to clean his wounds and he got antibiotics for about a week. He's the only one we snatched from the wild and brought inside to treat. When he was stronger he went outside but stayed in his hospital room for about another week as he regained his health and finally one morning he was gone. We did see a scarred up moth-eaten opossum for months afterwards.  :t:Ooops! Sorry. That was more of a bird house memory.:-OWe STILL have that same bird house and about every other year there's at least one injured or sick squirrel that moves in as though asking to be helped. Over the years we have lost just one squirrel who died of mange / starvation a day after he sought refuge in the house.</blockquote>

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