ornithologist | .//INBOX

Were all those last names just for fun or do you actually know shit about birds?

That's a serious question. I'm not joking around.

I do know something about birds. Did your egg hatch into a bird as well? I have a wren chick that I'm almost afraid to breath on.

[Oh thank God.]

The hell is a wren? A songbird?

Yeah, mine hatched into this thing. What the fuck am I supposed to do with it?

[He's going to send Harold a short video of what looks like a ball of lint with a beak and claws making little chirpy noises. It's sitting in a box with a towel.]

[ Harold does, in fact, love birds. He watches the video about five times, feeling like he just discovered viral videos in the early 2000s. ]

Congratulations, you have an owlet. Please be mindful of its talons, they're as strong and sharp as an adult's from birth. Owls should not perch on arms. In the immediate future you will need a warming device keeping its environment at 35° C and its habitat should have a bedding of small loose sticks. A wren is a common small brown bird with a complex song.

[Accelerator is over here feeling a whole rare bout of cluelessness and hating it. Obviously sending an entire video is the most efficient method of data transmission, since it includes both visual and audio information.]

You're talking like I'm going to keep the damn thing. I can't just find some owl nest outside and put it in there? Wouldn't it be better to let actual owls raise it?

How small? [He made it sound tiny....]

They're likely to reject it. I agree releasing it is the wisest course, but you'll need to take care of it until it's able to look after itself. And you'll want to do so in such a way that it doesn't become dependent on human care. It is currently 1.3 grams and will be a bit over 10 grams fully grown.

[.... Oh.]

I don't want to kill it.

[Compared to the stuffed animals this seems to just be a harmless baby bird. It doesn't deserve to be rejected by other living things just because he's bad with animals.]

Okay, fine. What else do I need to know? What does it eat?

Shit, that's tiny. It must look even more absurd than this owlet.

Yes, I thought not. At this age it mainly eats live insects. I'll locate an appropriate text and set it aside for you on the circulation desk. Owlets are uniquely absurd, believe me. This wren check is just terrifyingly tiny. I just keep staring at it.

Thanks. I don't have a lot of experience with animals, let alone wild ones.

Send me some pictures, I want to see this thing.

[ Harold doesn't respond with text, just a picture of his hand cradling the chick. ]

[Wow, that is tiny.]

Shit, you could lose that thing so easily.

Thank you, I'm not sufficiently worried about it already...

Well, you seem to have a good handle on bird knowledge, so I'm sure it'll be fine.

[Which begs the question....]

Why do you know so much about them, anyways?