"Little guy."
When Reuben and his mom found Peta the Magpie,
they didn't think they'd be able to get her back to her parents,
"I run over to my mom."
"I tell her, 'Mom, Mom, Mom! I found this baby bird!'"
and they couldn't just leave her outside.
She was too little to be alone.
"And I thought in my heart, 'No. She was born to live, have a life, have a family.'"
So in she came to the incubator.
"I would feed her all day, every single day."
"Come here, little guy."
Peta needed help getting bigger before she could go back to the wild,
and Reuben would be there every step of the way.
"Today, I think she's about 5 or 6 days old now."
"So pretty soon, she's going to be able to open her eyes. But right now she's just too little."
Every day, Reuben made sure Peta was growing,
and soon...
"She's old enough now to open her eyes, see?"
Peta couldn't walk yet,
and she definitely wasn't ready to go outside.
So for now, she spent her days
getting stronger in the coziest spot:
Reuben's hands.
And little by little...
"So she's 13 days old now,"
"and look at all these feathers! And her eyes are open and everything."
"She's so cool and gorgeous."
"This is day what, 14?"
"Yeah."
"Look at her, how she's getting all these feathers now." "Yeah, she's so big."
"Look at her wings."
One day, Reuben realized they had a problem.
"She's starting to get a little too big for the incubator."
It was time for a new home.
"It's got a little window so she can look out —"
"outside and see what soon she's gonna be living in."
"But you're too young for that just yet."
She wasn't a baby anymore, but she still needed to learn to use her legs,
and someday her wings, before she could go live outside.
But Reuben knew what to do:
He became Peta's teacher in all things magpie.
"So right now we're trying to teach her how to walk."
"Peta!"
"Look, she's trying."
"She's trying to get her strength up. Oh!"
"See how she pushes himself?"
"Peta, come on, you hungry? You hungry?"
"It's the first long walk she's ever done outside her cage."
"So we're just listening to noises of magpies, so she can learn
how to make noises of herself and other magpies."
Soon she would be ready to go outside for the first time,
but for now, her favorite spot was still here.
Or here.
"Every time I walk over, she flips over for a belly scratch."
Peta had grown so much, and she was an expert walker.
Well, hopper.
So Reuben decided she was ready for this:
"We've introduced her to outside."
"Look at her!"
Having fun, Peta?
But Peta still had a lot to learn, like finding food on her own.
So Reuben started new magpie lessons out here.
"I put worms in front of her."
"She started learning how to find worms on her own."
But there was one big thing
Peta still needed to learn how to do: fly.
Reuben could tell Peta really wanted to try,
so they kept practicing.
And then one day, he took her out
to the yard.
Reuben and his mom knew that it wouldn't be long
before Peta would be ready to go home to the wild.
"Whenever she wants to go into the wild,"
"she can go. That's where she belongs."
"She makes that decision."
"She honestly has brought so much joy to the family."
"She might fly away any day."
"Well, we don't know."
"Any day now, she could fly away."
"As long as she knows she always has a home here."
But when she goes,
Reuben knows he will never forget her.
"If I just left her out there, she wouldn't have changed my life."
"When she wants to go into the wild,"
"she's probably going to tell her kids that there's a boy named Reuben"
"that I want you guys to visit."