Amy's acts of compassion toward critters have, in fact, rarely been appreciated by any of her human associates.  Each year she'd tame the litter of kittens in the woodpile.  The kittens would grow to be cats that would launch themselves at the screen door the moment someone opened the inner door.  It's disconcerting to open a door to be greeted by 10 flying felines hitting the screen yowling and clawing just inches from your face.  It's tiring to have to always exit your house kicking to keep cats from entering.  It's sad and disgusting to start the car on a cold day only to have it clunk loudly as the fan belt exterminates a cat that has crawled onto the engine block to enjoy the warmth.

Then there were her birds.  Amy and birds seemed to have an affinity for one another.  An abandoned baby bird was a baby in need of care.  Through our house have come blackbirds, killdeer, an owl and baby starlings.  No matter how worthless or ugly the bird might be, if it was helpless and in need of love, Amy gave it.  She was devoted to her babies, cared for them as their own mothers would, and was rewarded for her efforts by a nearly 100% mortality rate.

There were several starlings.  Nothing is uglier than baby starlings.  They're naked, have distended bellies, and are all mouth.  Amy constructed nests by filling tin cans with tissue paper.  Every time anyone came near the nest, the baby starlings opened their gaping mouths as far as they could in the expectation that someone would put food in.

Besides being ugly, starlings are also very messy.  As they got older, they learned to keep their nests clean by aiming their excrement over the lip of the can and onto Margie's walls.  Margie was not fond of starlings.

Perhaps we wouldn't have gotten into starlings if we'd known what they were in the first place.  We thought they were robins.  They got cuter as they feathered out.  The end came when they were put outside on the baler to enjoy the sunshine and outdoors.  When Amy returned, all that was left were feet.

Margie was fond of the baby killdeer.  Killdeer are cute.  They're hatched as little down-covered chicks, and are able to walk and follow their mothers the first day.  Amy's little killdeer was easy to care for.  It ate chick starter, padded around the living room, and liked to hunt out and settle down in sunny spots on the carpet.  It liked warmth.

One morning, however, while Amy was at school, Margie found it cold and suffering from hypothermia.  It was spring.  The nights were cool, but the days warmed up rapidly when the sun came up.  I had not been lighting a fire in the fireplace at night.  The little killdeer needed some heat fast.

Thinking quickly, Margie realized that the warmest place would be in the car.  The rays from the morning sun had been shining through the window, and the heat was trapped inside.  Into the car Margie placed the killdeer chick.  There she left it as she went about her work.  Alas, when she thought of it again, the little bird had gone from being cold to being cooked.  We all felt badly.

Then there was the little blackbird.  It almost made it to adulthood.  It had fledged out and was even being given yard privileges so that it could be prepared for release outdoors.  But it, too, came to a tragic end.  It was sitting in the grass when Adam, who was just a toddler, stepped on it.

Amy was heartbroken.  Her creative brothers and sisters assuaged her grief by organizing an elegant funeral.  The bird was placed in a candy box decorated with dandelions and Johnny-jump-ups.  A funeral cortege of slow-moving bicycles made its way to the barn where the baby blackbird was laid to rest beneath a pine tree.

Most interesting of all was the adult pygmy owl that someone brought us.  It had been hit by a car which injured its wing.  It was a little miniature owl, no larger than a woman's hand.  Its perch was a little heirloom silver cup which sat on our mantel.  It perched there and watched our activities with interest.  When anyone approached too closely, it snapped its beak in what it hoped was a frightening manner.

The little owl grew to trust us, to a point, and its injury healed nicely.  It regained the ability to fly.  We knew it was time to be released when it disappeared.  We searched high and low throughout the house and finally found it longingly sitting on a windowsill upstairs.  It was one of the few, and perhaps the only bird, that was able to be released.