Alexander and Tatiana Babaeva could not get past the tiny stork chick, who was left all alone after the strongest storm. The journalists of Belgorodskaya Pravda told how a real drama played out in the village of Setnoye in the Korochansky district of the Belgorod region. A raging wind knocked down a nest of white storks near the house of Alexander and Tatiana Babaev. The adult birds managed to fly to the river, and the chicks, who were barely a month old, fell down.
Tatiana rushed to check the chicks. At first, she thought that all four were dead. "I'm shouting: Sasha, look, the nest has fallen! – Tatiana recalls. – And get there quickly. Three are dead and one is still moving. I wrapped him in a warm sweater. He's all wet, shaking, his heart is pounding. They took him to the barn to the chickens, began to warm him up with a hairdryer. They thought he wouldn't live to see the morning."
All night the Babaevs did not close their eyes, worried and simultaneously studied the information about what storks eat. Then Alexander, with a flashlight in the rain, collected earthworms for the baby for several hours. And he immediately managed to come up with a name for the chick. "He was so wonderful, defenseless, pathetic," says Alexander Babaev, "Well, definitely Mityai."
When the owners looked into the barn in the morning, to their great joy they found the chick alive and very hungry. That's where the worms came in handy.
The Babaev family watched with great interest how adult storks incubate their offspring in the nest. In April, the female sat on the eggs and a month and a half later the first squeak sounded from the nest. "Even before the hurricane, we read that storks can throw weak chicks out of the nest. Natural selection. And at that time we were still thinking, maybe we should pull the net at the bottom. And if they are thrown out, we will take care of them ourselves. They didn't throw it away, but the hurricane tried," says the head of the family.
To make the stork comfortable, a nest was built in the yard for him, because the baby did not know how to fly yet. They were fed him with chicken giblets and everything that would be caught in the local river - small carp, roaches, minnows, frogs, lizards and grasshoppers. And the new mother taught the chick to fly – Tatyana Babaeva ran with Mitya across the fields, waving her arms like wings until he took off.
When the stork grew up, specialists from Kursk came to the rescue and ringed the bird. After all, he needs to be released and accustomed to an independent life, storks are migratory birds, and Mityai also needs to join the flock and fly to warmer climes.
"I've already become attached to him, I'm going out, he's running towards me. I talk to him, he answers. It will be a pity to let him go. But it is necessary, because it will be better for him," Alexander Babaev shares. – They say storks are good luck. I keep hoping that Mityai will help me too. I have cancer, after all. Maybe he came to us to heal me. Maybe it will take wing, fly away at the end of summer and return to us next spring. And I'll meet him!"
Quite recently, Mityai found a flock for himself and, quite unexpectedly for everyone, took to the sky and flew to warmer climes. But the Babayev family is waiting and hoping that next spring, in the nest near their house, which they have thoroughly strengthened, they will again hear the familiar chirping of their Mitya.
Photos of Elena Zhuravleva and from the personal archive of the Babayev family.