Dear Readers, As I write this, we’re in the final days of 2015. How was your year? I know for many of my loved ones, 2015 brought a large share of challenges. Difficult and costly projects, lost loved ones, health problems, hearts broken… For others, it was a year of joy and new beginnings. Weddings,…
My 2015 started with a cold snap in Fort Collins, Colorado. Keith and I had just brought our motorhome to Colorado and we were still settling in, with the heaters all running full blast. The excitement of living in a great town and the prospect of soon finishing not one, but two books I’d had…
Below is my account–as written in e-mails at the time–of my final weeks with Stella the Starling. Monday, June 19, 2000 I am playing a CD of 50 bird songs. You should see my birds! Stella is listening intently–I can see how she would start imitating them if she heard them enough.
Just in case you haven’t been following my blog lately, I recently published my first children’s book, Stella the Starling. I’ve delved into my old e-mails to find things I wrote about Stella while I raised her. Here are weeks 5 and 6 of “The Stella Diaries” from the summer of the year 2000. Enjoy!
Thankfully, the cough/sneeze that John mentioned on May 25 cleared up. By Stella’s fourth week of life, she had really developed a personality, and quickly endeared herself to everyone around! Here are some notes I wrote during that week. If you’ve read Stella the Starling (my children’s book), then you’ll no doubt recognize where…
My little Stella grew so fast! Since Mrs. Wolf, the master teacher in the classroom where I student taught, was uncomfortable with me bringing the bird to school, John volunteered to take over Stella’s care for a few days. Here are another couple of weeks’ worth of e-mail exchanges between me and John (the illustrator of Stella…
I’m so excited that my children’s book, Stella the Starling, based on a real-life wild European Starling that I hand-raised, is finally out! Writing that story brought back many memories. I went hunting through my computer e-mail archives and found quite a few detailed messages that I had sent to my friend and fellow bird enthusiast,…