We have a dying bird in the backyard. Yesterday, Stanley caught a bird and was playing with it — tossing it around, etc. We were sure he had killed it (bad Stanley).
I went out later to throw the body away only to discover that the bird was not dead, just wounded. So the question became — how badly wounded was it? If the bird were near death, then we (I) would probably be doing it a favor by killing it and relieving it of its misery.
But when I checked, the bird didn’t look that badly wounded, which suggested a new course of action — allowing the bird an opportunity to heal. If I killed the bird, and it were capable of fully healing, then the action of killing it would itself be a bad thing.
So the new plan is to see if the bird is still alive this morning then, if so, take it to Songbird Rescue in Sebastopol — which takes in found injured wild birds. I’m not sure what they do with the birds, but I’m happy to pass the life-and-death decision to someone else.
[ADDENDUM: I checked this morning, and the bird was dead. Ants were crawling on its lifeless body. I feel really bad, but I know I would have had a difficult time killing it even if I knew it were dying. We need to better manage Stanley so he doesn’t regularly hurt birds.]
[ADDENDUM 2: See my poem from yesterday about Stanley: Shall We Play?]