The names we choose for our pets have the power to shape their lives, and no one knows this better than Maria Bertrand. She’s the proud owner of the sparrow named Happy, and he couldn’t have picked a better name for this adorable and cheerful bird.
Happy flew into Bertrand’s life when she was on her daily run back in 2020, and he was so tiny it took her a moment to figure out he was actually a sparrow.
“I thought it was a crab at first because he was a day old. So he was just a teeny-tiny, little, little guy with no feathers. He couldn’t see. And so I got closer to him and I realized it was the bird,” the Los Angeles native told Global News.
Taking care of an injured bird in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t easy because she couldn’t find an animal rehab center to take him in. She had to take things into her own hands and feed him food every 20 minutes to keep him alive.
Happy helped Bertrand as much as she helped him, and she says he got her through a really awful time. Her initial plan was to release him into the wild, but that was impossible due to his damaged beak, so she decided to take him in and they’ve been inseparable ever since.