Let me just preface this post with a little personal background. I was NOT raised in a family that loved nature. If God made it outside it should stay outside, don't bring it in the house. I am weird about the kids bringing in sticks, leaves, anything of that nature and when it comes to live creatures, forget about it, I do NOT want them in my house and in all honesty, I really don't want to be out there with it either. Now, I realize this mentality goes heavily against the CM philosophy of education and I am trying to have a deeper appreciation of nature. This is a work in progress for me while I am trying to instill a love of nature in my children. This is an area I truly struggle in. That being said, let me get on with our story...
This week my kids were checking on their baby birds living in a nest on our basement deck. While doing so they also spent some time playing in the basement (mostly a playroom). They (usually the boys) have a tendency to leave the back door to the deck wide open. This allows any little woodland creature to meander in at will. Well this time it was an injured bird. The kids found him on the floor. I assumed it was dead & told them to sweep it outside & off the deck. As they were doing this, the little guy began to flutter a bit. OK, so now we have a live bird, that is not doing well. My thought (see preface) get it out of my house & onto the back deck. It's going to die anyway & I don't know the first thing about birds. So we swept it onto the back deck & left. After a few hours it was still alive, ugh! Now what do I do? I can't sweep it into the woods alive & injured. I finally talked to my husband about it (this man will try to save an ant if he can) and he was mortified that we had left it on the porch to suffer. He said we should at least try to do something or I should put it out of it's misery & kill it. OK, I did not have the stomach to kill it so I let the kids put it into a shoebox & bring it in. Now the thing was going to die in my house, yuck! Not too mention the bird poop & mess it would make in the box. The kids wanted to keep it on my kitchen counter, NO WAY! But we did keep it on the bathroom counter, close to the water. We found out that we were taking care of a House Wren, looked up what they ate (bugs, moths, spiders, flies, etc.) & Jack set off to find food. We also set him up with a towel for comfort & a small container of water. The little one survived the night, drank the water & ate all but 1 of the bugs that Jack caught. Jack even went through the trouble of tearing off the wings of the moths he caught because we read that they usually don't eat the wings. Erin and Jack were very good caretakers, they spent a lot of time talking to the bird, they wanted to name it but I wouldn't let them. They had grandiose plans of getting a cage & keeping it for a pet. He seemed to be in better spirits the next morning but by early afternoon was not doing well. I would stop in to talk to him and he would just look at me as if he was so grateful to be taken care of, when I walked away he would chirp for me to come back and talk to him. It was so sweet. Every time we would turn him right side up he would flip over to his back, I could tell he was having trouble breathing but we couldn't get him to stay right side up. Right before dinner the kids realized he had died. They were so upset, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed also, not surprised, just sad. Jack and Erin just cried their little hearts out. I tried to explain that they had done a wonderful & beautiful thing, they had helped one of God's smallest & most helpless creatures live it's last few hours very comfortably. No matter what they or we did, he was going to die anyway, he was injured & sick, but they did everything they could and I know God is pleased with them. It's been about 3 days now & they are still sad about it. Death is hard to face, it's a difficult lesson to deal with but one of the joys of having my kids home with me all day is they learn how to deal with these experiences in our home with momma to cry on & comfort them. I have to admit that I'm glad we brought him into our home and tried to help him. Hopefully, he died knowing that he was being cared for and he wasn't alone. 
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