It could only have been fate, Linda Anderson says.

Saturday, April 13, 2002

It could only have been fate, Linda Anderson says.

She saw a Grackle in a niche outside her house on April 3. It ran off when she came outside.

The next day, the bird was sitting in the gutter along the street outside her Albert Lea home. As she chased it out, she could see one of its feet was injured. The bird went onto the lawn.

&uot;The next thing, I could see it sitting on its butt right out in the middle of the street,&uot; Anderson said. &uot;So I shooed him to the other side of the street.&uot;

He sat in the driveway there for a while, but it wasn’t long before he was back sitting in the middle of the street.

Anderson could take no more. Either the bird was going to get hit by a car or a cat was going to eat it, she said. So she picked it up and brought it into the house.

&uot;I brought him in to die,&uot; Anderson said.

But the bird had other ideas, and is on the mend.

This isn’t the first Grackle Anderson has rescued. Her first one, in Manchester, had fallen out of a nest as a baby, and she kept it as a pet. That one lived to be 17 years and 10 months old. He died in March of 2000.

&uot;They live three or four years in the wild,&uot; she said.

This one, she says she has no intention of keeping, and she’s not even going to name him.

The first night in the house, Anderson said she held the bird and he fell right to sleep. She put him in her old bird’s cage, and &uot;he was calm as a cucumber.&uot;

The bird doesn’t try to fly yet, but can now walk on his foot. One of the toes is obviously curled in the wrong direction, which makes it impossible for him to perch right now.

&uot;He can’t go out if he can’t hold onto anything,&uot; Anderson said.

She believes the bird was out with a flock of other blackbirds. &uot;I feed the birds,&uot; she said. &uot;But I don’t know what happened to him.&uot;

The bird is now making Grackle noises again and has a good appetite. &uot;He likes minnows and tuna fish,&uot; Anderson said.

She also gave him a bath.

&uot;He was really dirty. But he let me bathe him. I couldn’t believe it,&uot; she said.