A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while she puzzled over how to rehabilitate the bird to the wild.

Jan Shadick is a wildlife rehabilitator, and the Executive Director of Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation. Jan has spent decades advocating for wildlife rehabilitation, and she trains and encourages new rehabilitators.

Animal rehabilitation and care are a beautiful example of how humans can resist our hubris and become more humble with our relationships with nature. As Silent Spring becomes a reality, and as birds migrate across continents, this episode looks at the heartbreaking loss of birds and animals. The conversation also explores how to refuse to accept the continued destruction of biodiversity, by recognizing that we ourselves are animals, and we can be a force for good.

We live in relationship with the animals, our neighbours and creaturely kin, and when the convenience of our modern life causes animals great violence, we seek ways to grapple with and grieve their deaths.

Guest Amanda Stronza is an environmental anthropologist who creates powerful and poetic animal memorials that bring beauty to the deaths of the animals who live among us.

This conversation invites us to pay attention and bear witness to animals, and to see their deaths in a way that honours animal life while also redeeming us – the human animal.