Guardian angels can come in many forms, as one woman discovered when she took care of a baby bird only to have the bird return the favor when she got sick. The baby blue jay was just a few days old when Dina Theissen found him lying on the ground next to a tree near her front door.
The poor bird was helpless, but on the advice of a wildlife rescue, Dina and her family left the bird alone to see if his mother would come back for him, but she didn’t. That’s when Dina and her family took “Gracie” in.
They raised him in their screened-in patio so he was exposed to the outside world and with the goal to let Gracie back into the wild. They helped teach him to forage for insects and after a month he was ready to be released. At first, he didn’t want to go and it took a week for him to be confident enough to leave their yard and explore the world.
He soon he did and he was “free as a bird”, but he would come back to visit them every day for short visits. That would change when Dina was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
It’s as if the little bird knew that his surrogate mother needed him and he would sit with her and chirp and talk to her as she rested and recovered. He gave the whole family comfort and support during that difficult time and, in a sense, was Dina’s guardian angel.
“A guardian angel can take place in many forms. I never thought mine would come in the form of a blue jay,” she says. Dina is now cancer free, but Gracie still comes by to visit his family every day.
Watch Dina talk about her feathered member of the family in the short video below and share this touching story with your friends.