A story about love and freedom!

We had a severe storm with high winds and floods a while ago! The next morning one of the residents in our complex brought this little guy to me! Oh yes, this bedraggled baby Mousebird looked a sorry sight! I was told that if I could raise it, that they make good pets and one can even teach them to talk!

Well, I put the little guy into a cage that we keep for emergency cases and we fed him small pieces of Bananas by hand!
To cut a long two day story short, we placed the cage outside on day one as there are many Mousebirds that come to eat some fruit from our feeding tray and the little guy chirped at them but received no answer!

So we took him inside for the night, fed him and he slept inside the cage! The next day, I put the cage outside again near my chair to protect him from predators and at a moment a female adult Mousebird arrived to sit in a tree in our garden! She chirped and the little guy went crazy inside the cage, flitting up and down and answering her call. I immediately knew that she was his mother!

I took him out of the cage and as I opened my hand to set him free, he flew directly to his mother! I have some photos about their happy reunion somewhere, but that is not what this story is about!
Look at this!

Look! He came back here! This is the same little lost one that has now grown into a fine young man! You may ask how I know that it is the same one? Well this little guy flies right up to me! None of the other Mousebird's do this as they are very wild, but here he is at the bird bath right next to my chair!

An old saying goes; "Set them free and if they come back to you, then they are yours! If they don't come back they were never yours in the first place"
This is so true! Although I will never regard the little one as my own personal property, he has his own precious freedom to explore his world and we will remain friends!
I feel that's the way things should be!

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