Back in June of 2014, Susan Hickman took a closer look at a cracked starling egg that she happened to see on the ground while she was getting her horses and goat settled for the night. At that time, Hickman was prepared to discard it but suddenly saw a tiny baby bird hatch out of it in her hand.
“I looked up at the huge maple tree from which it had probably fallen from and knew there was no way I could get it back to its nest,” Hickman wrote on a Facebook
post.
Looking at the plight of the poor and helpless bird, she didn’t want to leave it in the mud to die and instead decided to take the bird back to her house. She then set up a “makeshift incubator and gathered my baby bird feeding supplies.”
The little bird then made it through the first night. According to
The Dodo, Hickman’s friend who was experienced in bird rescues predicted that the bird wouldn’t survive.
However, much to everyone’s surprise, the little bird made it through the toughest time and was named Klinger, after the character on
M.A.S.H. Hickman fed the bird once every 20 to 30 minutes in the first two weeks, and gradually, it became stronger and bigger. Klinger started growing feathers and learned how to feed itself and take baths, as well as how to fly. According to Hickman, the bird even learned how to talk.
She then documented the bird’s progress in a
video that she posted on YouTube to celebrate the bird’s first birthday.
In the video, Hickman said that she had wanted to release Klinger back into the wild but realized she could not, as it had become a domestic bird and would not survive in the wild. Thus, she decided to keep Klinger as a pet.
Hickman continues to chronicle Klinger’s life and shares interesting things on her Facebook page. In December 2017, she
wrote: “Klinger left his food dish briefly to look at a huge number of Starlings perched in the trees and on the power wires outside of the bird room windows. Then he looked at me and said, ”Who’s a good bird?“ With that, he turned his attention back to his food.”
She further added: “I would’ve thought he'd be more interested, but then I remembered he’s never seen another Starling before. Heck, he doesn’t even know he’s a Starling. I think Klinger believes himself to be an exotic talking bird.”
The exotic 5-year-old talking bird surprises Hickman with incomplete sentences. In early 2019, Klinger even tried to imitate Hickman’s son Matthew’s voice, but he clammed away when she tried to take a video of him.
Hickman wrote in a
post, “Mom! What? Mom!! I thought Matthew was calling for me. It was Klinger talking in Matthew’s voice.”
Watch the video:
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