Abigail (Abby) Marsh

And so I couldn't possibly leave it there.

And so I luckily was right next to a local vet.

And I wandered in with a bird, hoping dimly that maybe they would be able to help with the bird.

All they could do was give me a box to put it in.

And so I put the little baby bird in a box.

I walked home with it, called my local animal rescue center, and they said they would be happy to take the baby bird in.

And so I took about an hour out of my morning and dropped the baby bird off at a little wildlife center.

Absolutely.

And this really was a very good example of alloparental care when I look back on it.

I was not this baby bird's parent, but I was immediately willing to take over in loco parentis and provide the care it needed to make sure that it was going to survive.

And, again, it's such a tiny thing in the scheme of things.

It was just no huge sacrifice on my part.

But looking back, that altruistic impulse that I had to help, regardless of the fact that it was going to cost me certainly quite a bit of time and effort, really didn't matter to me at all.

I just needed to make sure that this little baby was going to be okay.

I found that I had grown very attached to it in a short period of time, and I kept track of it.

The Wildlife Center very kindly sent me emails about it, that it was being raised with a bunch of other blue jay fledglings that had been dropped off.

It had learned to fly.

It had learned to feed itself.

And then they let me know when it was finally ready to be released back into the wild.

Absolutely.