One thing I have to do is give credit to the astro-Bird's parents for feeding him really well before they tossed him out on his ass. (You can't help but know exactly how much he has had to eat because you can SEE for yourself with no effort at all. The millet in his crop looked like an especially ugly, bumpy tube scarf.) This would buy us some time to plan his next meal, if he would require one at all.

      I thought maybe I could just pop a mouthful of millet, chew it up a bunch, then spit it out and feed it to him. Peter got out my tweezers and started separating the chaff from a single grain of millet. He was totally absorbed in it. Then Wes put a little pile of millet on our cutting board, mashed it with some big, flat thing, then blew the chaff away very carefully. It was more efficient than Peter's method, but it did result in powdered millet which might be harder to track through the astro-Bird's translucent digestive tract.

      Since Peter's gotten faster at shelling millet and he seems to like that sort of work, we're going to stick with that for now. Truth be told, I have baby bird formula mix in the fridge right now, but it really wasn't meant for finches and I am afraid something bad will happen if we use it.