Unsure what her charge ate, Mattrick rounded up some worms and bugs, razoring them into bite-size specks. She e-mailed wildlife rehabilitation shelters to learn more. The bird, they said, was unlikely to survive.
But Stormy Girl did fine, growing feathers, filling out on a diet of fruit and nuts, and finding its singing voice. Mattrick learned her new friend was a house finch. The bird would serenade her as it followed her around the house. "She thought I was her mother," Mattrick says.
Which was just what Mattrick needed, since the last of her four daughters had moved out and she didn't feel well enough to teach anymore. The bird, she says, helped lift her depression.
The column, by outdoors writer Ad Crable of the Intelligencer Journal/New Era, ran May 11. Two mornings later, about 9 a.m., a knock at the door startled Mattrick. More alarming were her callers: a Pennsylvania Game Commission officer and three armed policemen.
They'd come for the bird.
Who knew you couldn't keep house finches in the house?
Certainly not Mattrick. But the Game Commission knew. Those garden-variety fowl - the Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates there are as many as 1.4 billion of them on the continent - are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1918.
Mattrick was breaking the law.
Over the last few months, the case has created quite a squawk. Readers sounded off, some accusing the commission of storm-trooper tactics, others defending its vigilance. A Facebook group called Help StormyGirl attracted 411 members at last count.
And Mattrick has found an ally in Lancaster County's top prosecutor.
"At best, this case was a grossly misguided abuse of law enforcement discretion," says Craig Stedman, the county's district attorney. "At worst, it was just plain cruel."
