Laurel Creager’s best friend is a featherlight creature who perches on her shoulder, clings to her hair, demands a daily dose of mealworms ... and occasionally poops down her back.
Meet Frank, a female sparrow that was rescued this spring by Creager and raised with tender loving care. The wee bird, which was perhaps a day old -- and looked like a “hairless little Pterodactyl”-- when Creager encountered it, has grown up, filled out and become an important part of her life in Alabama.
“My home revolves around Frank now," Creager says. “I think she’s become part of our family. When we’re cooking dinner or doing homework, she’s with us. It’s really become second nature to us.”
Creager’s relationship with Frank and her experiences with rescuing wild birds are featured in a video released today by The Dodo, a company that focuses on animal-related stories and videos. Many of The Dodo’s clips are extremely popular on social media, earning thousands or even millions of likes and shares from viewers.
“We want our readers to fall in love with animals, have fun and be entertained while they’re doing it, and feel empowered to help animals in need,” The Dodo’s Facebook page says.
Creager’s tale certainly seems to check all of those boxes, and will join videos in the “Dodo Heroes” series, about “animals in need and the humans who give them hope.”
Creager, 37, whose Instagram handle is @motherofthewild, says she’s pleased to be featured by The Dodo, even if she doesn’t consider herself a hero. And she isn’t a certified wildlife rehabilitator, although Creager says that’s her goal after taking care of Frank and several other hatchlings.
For now, she’s simply an animal lover with a kind heart, and a longtime rescuer who’s unwilling to see any creature suffer.
“I never thought I would love something so small that I knew nothing about,” Creager says in an interview with AL.com. “Before Frank, I couldn’t tell you what a sparrow was. And I never cared.”
Creager -- who lives in Birmingham with her husband, Mike Creager, and their two children, Vera and Dread -- first laid eyes on Frank in mid-April. In the past, she’d reserved her nurturing skills for earthbound critters, including dogs, rabbits, hermit crabs, guinea pigs and rats.
Frank was something else entirely: an almost embryonic creature that was sightless, helpless and tiny enough to fit in the palm of Creager’s hand.
“My neighbor’s close friend almost ran over Frank with a lawnmower,” Creager says. “They lived far away from the Alabama Wildlife Center at Oak Mountain. My neighbor reached out and said, ‘You’ve helped other animals in the past. Ever had a bird?'
“I for sure thought there was no way she would live. She was too young. I think that was where my mothering instincts kicked in. I spent every 15 minutes feeding her for the first few days. We constantly used a heating pad. ... I had no idea it was a sparrow; I just knew it was an insectivore. I Googled and read everything I could find."
"Every day, it was hard,” Creager says. “When you’ve never done something before, and don’t even know what a thing is ... But we stayed constant with heat and food. I can’t kill things, so Mike, who’s a vegetarian, had to chop the heads off worms for Frank.”
As Frank began to thrive, Creager’s knowledge and confidence grew, slowly at first, then steadily. She admits to making mistakes -- identifying Frank as male or female was a challenge, for example -- and Creager says Frank imprinted on her because she held the baby bird to her chest for warmth and comfort, right from the start.
Although Creager didn’t realize it initially, this means Frank cannot be released into the wild. Through imprinting, Frank has bonded with her for life, has no fear of people and always will identify with humans instead of other sparrows. In short, the bird thinks of Creager as its mom.
“I just knew that if you had a newborn baby, you hold them to your chest,” Creager says. “So that’s what I did. We did try to release her and it backfired.”
Nevertheless, Creager and her family are committed to caring for Frank, doing whatever it takes to provide the sparrow with the best life possible indoors.
“She’s a full member of the family,” Creager says. “Just like another child. I know it sounds weird, but that’s how I feel.”
Daily life at the Creager house has changed considerably since Frank arrived. The pantry is well stocked with millet and “a ton of bird foods.” Bird cages line the basement. Many cleaning products are verboten, because they’re hazardous to birds. Scented candles? Also a no-no.
Frank, who’s become a “little house mascot,” spends about half of her time in a cage, Creager says. Otherwise, the bird is roaming indoors.
“When new people come in, she is super curious,” Creager says. “She gets so excited. She wants to stand on their shoulder and head.”
Frank has developed some fairly strict routines, and the Creager family abides by them.
“Frank is very intense about her sleep,” Creager says. “She has a little house she goes in, and about 8 o’clock at night, she looks at me and it’s like mother and child. She’s saying, ‘Cover my cage.’ She chirps in the morning to let me know she wants me to uncover it.”
Frank also likes to sit on Creager’s shoulder -- the left side is her favorite -- when other birds receive her time and attention. To date, Creager’s rescues have included a cardinal, a wren, a towhee and a mockingbird. She’s currently tending two parakeets with “tons of personality” that are battling health problems.
Birds rescued by Laurel Creager have included, from left, Carlos, a cardinal; Wrennie, a wren; Poe, a mockingbird; and Frank, a sparrow. All four have enjoyed a morning snack of mealworms.(Courtesy of Laurel Creager)
Creager, who dreams of opening a wildlife center some day; husband Mike, technical director at the Alabama and Lyric theaters; daughter Vera, 9; and son Dread, 6; all have different relationships with the birds in her care, especially Frank.
Vera isn’t entranced with the resident sparrow -- and the feeling seems mutual, Creager says -- but the men in the family have become fast friends with Frank.
“Mike, he’s a big guy,” Creager says. “He looks like such a burly man, but he’s the biggest bird fan ever. Frank has changed my son’s life 100 percent. Dread has autism and he does what’s called ‘Frank time.’ She’s on a blanket, taking a dust bath, a dry bath, in his lap. He really caters to her.”
Raising baby birds is not for the squeamish, Creager says, and she offers proof.
“I wake up every morning with worms and what look like maggots all over my hands,” Creager says. “I’m so used to holding waxworms and mealworms. You become really knowledgeable in what the best-looking maggot is.”
Bird droppings are to be expected in the house, Creager says, and the family washing machine usually gets a workout.
“One question people ask me, no matter where I go, the thing I get hit up with is the poop," Creager says. “'Does she poop in your hair?' Of course. When I get ready to walk out of the house, Vera goes, ‘Mom, Dad, you’ve got poop on your back.’"
On the plus side, Creager has increased her avian education significantly -- by reading books, searching the internet, joining groups on social media and conferring with wildlife rescuers around the globe. (Some of her bird-minded friends hold Zoom calls known as “show your flock" parties.)
“I’ve joined every group in the entire world for sparrows and towhees,” Creager says. “I signed on to try to volunteer with the Audubon group, but it’s hard right now with COVID. ... I think birds are so brilliant, and there’s so much we don’t understand about them. They’re the unsung heroes of wildlife. The more I learn about birds, the more I am impressed.”
Creager says she doesn’t seek out baby birds to rescue, but increasingly, people bring them to her.
“They don’t know me, and I don’t know them, but they’ll drive by my house and hand me a box with a dying bird inside,” she says. “Or Mike will go out and grab them while I’m preparing food. We had a towhee come in not too long ago. I’m learning so much about babies that are hatching now.”
On Instagram, nearly 43,000 followers think of Creager as @motherofthewild, but she’s also become known as “the Bird Lady.” In Birmingham, that nickname is starting to stick, as well. (Creager says, with a laugh, that she assumes people actually are calling her “the Crazy Bird Lady.”)
Creager says she’s not sure how her rescue efforts came to The Dodo’s attention, but her Instagram posts are the likely culprit. She’s received attention before for her vivid images and captions, most notably in 2015 when Instagram chose one of her photos -- a close-up of Creager breastfeeding her son -- to announce its celebration of World Breastfeeding Week.
Creager’s Instagram handle originally was a reference to her relationship with Vera, who engaged in some creative shenanigans when she was younger. Now, however, the idea of being “Mother of the Wild” has an extra dimension for Creager as a wildlife rescuer.
“I think, in the end, there could not have been a more authentic name for how I feel being a mother, whether it’s a baby bird or a child,” she says. “It’s the same to me.”
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When a baby bird needs help, this Alabama woman swoops in - AL.com
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