The first animal Tracey Parsons rescued was a fledgling song thrush she found hopping in and out of the road. It had lost its mother. Parsons was seven. She kept it in her bedroom, where it flew around the room. She went to the library to learn how to feed it. Worms, she read. Parsons dug up her mother’s garden. The bird started following her around. In the morning it would fly up to her bunk bed and sing “the most beautiful song,” she recalls. “It made me feel like Snow White. I’ll never forget it.” Eventually, it flew away.
Parsons, who is now 35 and runs the Blackbird Boutique shop in Blackheath, south-east London, doesn’t know how many animals she’s rehabilitated since then. Thousands, she estimates. “I like animals,” she says, “because they’re pure and reflect the delicate beauty of nature. And they don’t have their own voices, so someone has to be their voice and protect them.”
