1) Never use the small hamster balls for your birds to lay eggs and raise their young.
(I think my fledgling's wing is ok now)Here's the second one, and it's so much worse
My husband woke me up in the middle of the night last night because he said my society finches were going crazy. Their hatchlings had recently started to fledge, so I assumed one of the babies had fallen out of the nest, and they were just panicked. It took me a while to get out of my sleep haze, but once I did, I went to the cage, and before turning on the light, we could barely make out what looked like a fledgling on the bottom of the cage. But it looked twisted and weird, so I thought, this poor guy must have been deformed or something, and I couldn't tell until he hopped out of the nest. So we turned the light on to make sure, and there it was, wrapped up by a CORN SNAKE
I screamed, and immediately reached in, grabbing the intertwined bird and snake, and pulled the snake free. We called our son in to get his beloved snake before I put it in my food processor
The fledgling's little body was limp and he was already gone in my hand. I started crying,
, cursing the snake, and wrapped up the little body. I had bought frozen pinkies for the snake on Monday, and my son had for some reason decided to wait until Sunday to feed it (sigh), so it decided to go looking for food. We all thought the lid was secure enough for the cage too, but we were SO wrong
The snake is around a foot and a half long, and barely wider than my pinkie finger, so we don't know if it would have actually been able to swallow the finch, but it would have tried! He went ahead and fed it some pinkies, and it's lid is now duct taped to the cage (it's wire mesh in the middle so it has ventilation), until we can decide what to do. My son, of course, wants to keep it, because he begged us for one for so long. Me? I want to see if finches will eat snake 
I feel horrible for the parents too...they were all so upset when it happened. Everyone seemed ok this morning though. Now we're down to five little fledglings, and I'm a worried mess
