Soles from the Souls

Have you ever gone shopping for shoes for your kids or yourself and ended up with more than you went for? How about 1500 more.

It started with school shoes for kids. Her own. It ended with shoes for 1500 kids.

The family that entered the Payless store that was having a closing sale that day never knew that that closing would spark the opening of their hearts in such a big way.

You can see the video of this Arkansas mom and her children inspired to gift shoes.

We never know when inspiration may strike, or be the catalyst to a whole different life trajectory.

The world cannot have too much kindness... and the thing about kindness is that the more you give, the more of it you have.

Never underestimate the power of kindness to alter a life trajectory… for the recipient and the giver.
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com

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Kind Bus Driver Helps Man Who Became Homeless

How do angels become angels? Perhaps it is by being guardian angels as humans first. Natalie Barnes, a Milwaukee bus driver is such a guardian angel in human form. Natalie was driving her routine bus route when Richard, a passenger she’d served in the past, stepped onto her bus.

Bowing his head, Richard’s reply to Natalie’s, “How are you doing?”, was “I’ve been homeless for a week now.”

Shelter in the Bus

When Natalie first learned of Richard’s trouble, he shared that a unit in the building where he lived caught on fire and he needed a place to stay for a couple of hours. He asked Natalie if it would be ok for her, if he rode the bus for awhile. She welcomed him warmly.

Soon Natalie realized that Richard was a kind and giving person. What caught her attention was his desire to share his little church candy with her and other passengers.

When Natalie saw Richard waiting for her bus on another night, she welcomed him and asked how he was doing.

Natalie remember that exact night. It was really cold and Richard seemed that he had nowhere to go. And, unfortunately, she was right. When he got on the bus he shared that the apartment building where he used to live was condemned and he was homeless, wandering the streets for a week now.

When Natalie realized Richard’s situation she immediately offered him to stay with her on the bus until her shift was over at 2:44 a.m. She even bought dinner for Richard.

Caught on Camera… Being Nice

The camera on the bus caught Natalie asking Richard, if he needed something from the dollar store. It is clear that Natalie was determined to help Richard in whatever way she could.

And then it struck her – she was going to shelter Richard in her bus until her shift ended at 2:44 a.m, but then what? Natalie came up with a solution by calling her friend at Community Advocates. They were able to find a temporary shelter for Richard and promised to assist him in finding a permanent home.

But Natalie went even further. She gave Richard her phone number and insisted on him calling to update her on his situation.

Simple Acts of Kindness Make All the Difference

It turns out that the exchanges between Natalie and Richard were caught on tape by the bus cameras. When the Milwaukee County Transit System noticed Natalie’s act of kindness and compassion, they awarded her third commendation for outstanding service.

Richard is forever thankful and even calls Natalie his “little guardian angel”. Natalie confirms that she and Richard keep in touch and that he is doing well.

Never underestimate the power of a simple act of kindness to change the world.

Source: MCTS

Gratitude is the music of the heart, when it’s cords are swept by the breeze of kindness.
~unknown

iHeartDaily… because the world needs more love.

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We live in the woods and birds sometimes fly into our windows. The most recent casualty is an injured cardinal.

This window strike was a red male cardinal. We’ve had several of these, but no female cardinal casualties yet, so it seems that the male cardinals are the feisty fighters. Some of them attack the glass and dash away, thinking they’re tussling with another male cardinal. These don’t usually get injured.

Other cardinals seem to think the glass is sky and fly into it hard enough to injure themselves, or worse.

We’ve had a few fatalities over the 30 years of living in the woods. Some died instantly of a broken neck. A few died minutes later, likely from internal hemorrhaging. This is always distressing because we love all animals.

The good news is that we’ve rescued and released far more birds than we’ve lost!

A Deterrent to Prevent Bird Strikes

And more good news: we found a fairly effective solution that has helped tremendously. It doesn’t look great, but if it saves the birds… we’re all for it!

You can read more about our bird crash prevention system here in this article on our gardening site.

However, we still have a few accidents here and there.

Our latest injured cardinal was is a very feisty male cardinal that injured his wing. When he tried to fly away, one wing clearly wasn’t working as well and he couldn’t fly. He could scoot around on the ground really well, so we had to scurry to try to catch him again.

We couldn’t let him go because he would most definitely not have survived. But we did learn an important lesson:

Wear gloves when trying to capture an injured bird!

Do Injured Birds Bite?

Typically, when we pick up the birds they’re stunned or shaken from the hit, so they’re docile and quiet while recovering. The feature image at top is actually one of our previous rescues and he flew away after awhile. It was harder to get photos of Cisco, as you will read below.

An Injured Cardinal Can Bite Very Hard

So far, none of the injured cardinal or other birds have bitten us.

But this guy was fully awake and aware and was definitely unhappy, scared and probably in pain. So when captured he bites, and very, very hard!

Imagine… birds can crack nuts and sunflower seeds with their beaks, so they are definitely quite strong. The effect was like being pinched to a blood blister.

Fortunately, the beak isn’t sharp enough to break the skin on most adults, but it sure can hurt a finger, and definitely not advisable for children to come in contact.

Injured Cardinal Francisco

Meanwhile, we’ve named him “Cardinal Francisco”… “Cisco” for short :-), and he’s enjoying eating good wildlife birdseed, drinking water and in general, making a mess and talking a lot… more like squawking a lot!

Local Vet Injured Cardinal for Free

Fortunately, there’s a vet in a neighboring town to us that will take in injured wildlife for free. So if you have injured birds or wildlife that need more than a few minutes in a safe environment to heal, search online for wildlife vet, and you’ll see the options near you.

It turns out that this injured cardinal broke his collarbone. The vet said he needed to stay overnight for observation, then they would work on his injuries the following day.

It turns out they needed to keep Cardinal Cisco for about four weeks to recover. They said they’d call us so we could release him back into our yard, but I guess they forgot because when we called them to check in, they’d already released him in their area.

It was sad not to see him fly off, but we’re just grateful he was healed and cared for.

It’s illegal to keep songbirds in captivity.

I know what they say: if you name them you end up keeping them, but that’s definitely not going to happen here! We love to help birds be free to fly, plus it’s illegal to keep songbirds in captivity^[1]http://www.ncwildlife.org/Portals/0/WDCA/documents/Birds.pdf, even if we were inclined to.

Meet Cisco the Red Cardinal

We didn’t have a bird cage but our small pet carrier, with towels placed inside is working out really well. We feed the birds in winter, so had a wild bird seed blend on hand and placed a dish of that along with a bowl of water into his cage. It was good to see him making good use of both as an indication of feeling well and even safe enough to eat and drink.

Cardinal “Cisco” in Recovery

Here’s a video of a previous cardinal rescue. He was only stunned and stayed to visit for awhile.

HeartDaily!

Wild Bird Rescue Stories

If you love birds, you may also enjoy reading some more wild bird rescue stories, and this one.

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