A Really Cool Story

That’s great, you might say, but who, pray tell, is Jackie Sparrow?

 

First off, she’s no relation to Captain Jack Sparrow, the Johnny Depp character in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He’s a fictional character, after all, but truth be told, he was the inspiration for her name.

 

Unlike her namesake, Jackie is living-and-breathing real. She’s also an actual sparrow.

 

Jackie isn’t just any ol’ sparrow, though. She’s a sparrow with a really cool story.

 

Seems that in July 2017, Gavin Holloway, the then 14-year-old son of Jen Holloway, Collegiate’s Cougar Shop manager, found two-day-old Jackie lying in her extremity on the sidewalk at their home in Midlothian.

 

Apparently, she’d fallen from her nest and was about to bid farewell to the world. Determined to save her, Gavin scooped her up and took her inside.

 

“I tried to work with a rehabilitator to have her cared for,” Jen said, “but the rehabilitator wasn’t allowed to take sparrows because they’re not a protected species in Virginia. She recommended that we try feeding her.”

 

It was up to the Holloways to decide Jackie’s fate.

 

“Gavin said, ‘Mom, we’ve got to try,’” Jen recalled one day recently as she sat in her office and reflected on the beginning of her family’s long, strange trip. “We had to feed her from dawn to dusk every 30 minutes. She had to stay on a heating pad. We had to check on her every two hours.”

 

Such was their life for almost three months.

 

“Then she started weaning off her baby bird formula and eating seeds and nuts and berries,” Jen continued. “We had a 23-year-old cat in the house at the time when we rescued her. She had no fear of the cat whatsoever. She also had a deformed foot which, I think, is probably how she ended up getting removed from the nest.”

 

Along the way, Gavin named the family’s new pet Jack. When they realized that Jack was a female by her distinctive coloring, she became Jackie.

 

“After four or five months,” Jen said, “we realized she wasn’t going to be able to survive in the wild. She can’t really perch. Most birds perch at night. She sleeps in a little wicker basket. We probably don’t have the only sparrow in captivity, but we might have the only one that still sleeps in a little wicker nest.”

 

Properly nourished, domiciliated, and loved, Jackie soon became a vital member of the Holloway family.

 

“She has her own room,” Jen said. “We have an office downstairs, which is where she has a cage. We can shut the door if we want to keep her in there. Otherwise, she flies the circuit through all the rooms (of the family’s downstairs, which has an open floor plan.)

 

“There’s a shelf in the dining room that she’s claimed. It has a wall of mirrors. She’ll land on that shelf. If we’re leaving in the morning and we need to put her back in her office, she’ll go to that shelf, and she’ll let us take her right from that shelf. Most of the time, we leave her out. She goes in her cage to drink water and eat and comes back out, flies around, and sits on the top again.”

 

There’s more.

 

“If we’re in the house, she likes being with us, so she’ll fly directly to your shoulder,” Jen added. “If I’m sitting down to read a book, she’ll sit on my shoulder and play with my hair. She’ll even follow me up the stairs. Instead of flying, she’ll hop every two steps. It’s really kind of funny.”

 

The Holloways have never left Jackie alone for long. She even accompanies them on their annual summer vacation trip to the beach or weekend getaways within driving distance.

 

“We just take her in her travel cage,” Jen said. “She loves the car. We haven’t flown with her. All of us have not been on a trip where we had to fly. If my husband (Earl) and I are traveling, my son (now 20 and a recent graduate of Liberty University’s aviation program) is home. She’s become such a part of the family. She likes to be with us.”

 

If it seems that Jackie has a personality of her own, well…yes, she does.

 

“She does have a great personality,” Jen said. “She’s curious about change. If we move a piece of furniture or change a curtain, she’s very curious. If there’s a loud noise, she’ll go right into her cage. Or if you’re there, she’ll go right to you. If she’s sitting on me and I go into the garage, she’s very curious but she won’t land on the garage floor.  She’ll fly around, and then she’ll land on my shoe.

 

“She doesn’t like bright, vibrant colors. Normally, when I come home, she’ll circle around my head two or three times and land on me, but if I’m wearing something really bright like a yellow Collegiate T-shirt, she’ll fly around and around me and then finally she’ll land and make a little peep like she doesn’t approve. She doesn’t like pink, red, yellow. It’s quite funny.

 

“She definitely has a sweet beak. She has a diet of bird seed, but she’ll also eat a little pinch of muffin or cookie. She makes a really high-pitched chirp if she wants something. If she’s thirsty, she’ll go over to the sink and make that high-pitched chirp. We come over, turn on the water, and she’ll turn her head and drink under the faucet. She’ll take a bath in my hand. She’s very attached to us. We find it very normal, but we have friends who think it’s quite strange that we have this small wild bird flying around the house.”

 

So you wouldn’t change anything?

 

“No, I wouldn’t,” Jen said. “It’s definitely been a commitment. She’ll be seven [years old] in July. Their life expectancy indoors is 13 years. I’ve read that the oldest one’s 23. We’ll have her for quite a while. I hope so.”

~Weldon Bradshaw