When Karen Caston of Otsego, Michigan, rescued an injured baby robin early this month, she had no idea that she was about to witness one of the sweetest and most unlikely phenomena.
On June 6, Caston heard an unusual chirping in her backyard. When she went to investigate, she found a juvenile robin, which appeared to have a wounded wing. She wanted to give the little dude a chance at life, so she took it into her home and began tending to it.
At first she kept the bird in a cage, isolated from her cats for obvious reasons. But she discovered after a few days that the robin, whom she’d taken to calling Peeps, really enjoyed nestling in her cats’ fur.
Amazingly, the cats accepted the baby bird’s presence and decided that it wasn’t prey.
Caston’s photo of the juvenile robin cuddled in the fur of one of her cats touched people around the country and around the world.
Last week, Caston released Peeps back into the wild at Otsego’s Brookside Park.
“He’s brought me a lot of joy, and it’s been an amazing couple of weeks,” she said. “I’m sad, yet I know it’s a wild animal and needs to return to nature.”
Peeps has also brought a lot of joy into the hearts of people all over. Thank you, Karen Caston, for caring enough to rescue a wounded bird, and thank you to the cats for setting aside their natural hunting instinct and helping to nurse the little thing back to health.
Source: Kalamazoo Gazette via UPI
