View from the North 40: It was no blue bird of happiness, but it was cool

When a person benefits in some way from the tragic misfortune of another, I think it behooves that person to honor the sacrifice with a moment or two of reflection on life lesson take-aways.

Or maybe I just feel guilty about getting official credit for identifying a bird that is a rare find in Montana, when really I only “found” it because my killer-assassin cat offed the bird and dumped its still-warm carcass on my doorstep (as if I would use the bird as his contribution to the family’s larder and whip up a batch of Songbird Soup to help us with our daily protein intake).

Now, before I get into the “chaos ensued” portion of this story, I want to say, don’t bother sending hate mail to my cat, he’s feral and doesn’t read a lick of English.

So moving on, last Friday, my husband and I came home to a shiny cinnamon-colored bird with a speckled, white underside laying belly-up at the corner of the house. Never having seen anything like it before, I set out to ID the bird.

Yes, this is where the chaos started its ensuing.

Day 1, I spent my free time trying unsuccessfully to find our bird books, which I had cleverly already put in a storage box somewhere, and taking photos of the bird in case, y’know, something packed it off in the night.

Day 2, the bird remained, but I didn’t have much time to work on the ID. I got the photos downloaded and found zero luck in my online Montana bird searches.

Day 3, I cleverly calculated how many hours the carcass had sat in the sun and expanded the range of my online search. I found photos and maps galore telling me the bird is a wood thrush that lives from the central Great Plains east and south.

Not Montana.

In a sense of urgency over the state of the carcass, which has now attained specimen status, I take the wood thrush safely sealed in clear plastic to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists. I flinch when the guy rolls the bird around in the bag and warn him that it’s been outside for three days, in the sun

I also post my dead-bird ID photos to an online bird watcher group. The sad-crying face emoji pops up in several responses because, in case you didn’t know, bird watchers prefer to see live birds.

I don’t mention the cat. I won’t repeat what the birder people prefer happens to cats.

Day 4, one of the responders is Montana Bird Advocacy Director and bird-book author Jeff Marks who wants to facilitate a transfer of the bird from me to University of Montana’s Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum, which maintains a collection of birds species. (Who knew?)

He surprises me by saying that my sighting of the wood thrush in Montana is only the 12th on record and my bird specimen will be only the second at the museum, so would I mind filling out an official bird-sighting form and shipping the specimen to the museum.

I surprise him by saying, I’d love to fill out the form, but the bird specimen is in sketchy condition and last seen in the possession of an FWP biologist at the game check station.

We are both surprised that I get the extensive form filled out by end of day and the wood thrush specimen is located and being readied for shipping to the museum — though, Marks says some dumpster diving was involved in the recovery of the specimen. Perhaps, the FWP intern was still there — he had a diver’s lean body.

I just hope the bird was put on ice at some point.

What did I learn from this experience? In chronological order:

1) Humans need to put more effort into breeding better domestic cats.

Look how much effort has been put into breeding “man’s best friend,” which has transformed the wolf into Chihuahuas, poodles, golden retrievers, Brussels pointing griffons, greyhounds, wiener dogs.

Meanwhile, a millennia of cat people are all, like, “I just want something to kill rodents,” or “I’m just happy every time my cat does its business in the litter box,” or “I have a hideous scar, but I got a million hits for my YouTube video that time my purring cat almost bit off my nose.”

Wouldn’t it be cool if, instead of a killer assassin cat, we could have a hunting cat that just goes out and points its little paw at the rare birds, and I just jot down the citing in a cute notebook with a drawing — Audobon-style.

2) Freeze the specimen first, identify it second. Seriously, do this. And ...

3) Never give anything away. You just don’t know when you’re going to need it back.

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Bonus lesson: Never throw anything away because one man’s trash could literally be another man’s treasure — no matter how cooked-off it is from four days in the sun at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .