Some say a day of freedom is better than a lifetime of captivity.

We don't always buy that.

He arrived shortly after the big spring blizzard. A full grown, angry male robin, in the hands of two really young boys. Left wing torn open just below the shoulder, bleeding, unable to fly, but spunky enough to peck at any wayward finger.

I promised we would take care of him.

By rights, I should have taken him inside, waited a decent interval to make sure the boys weren't coming back, and then killed the robin. It would certainly have been the efficient and professional thing to do, and probably the most humane, too.

But he made it through the first night. With Karo water to drink, and a wedge of torn t-shirt to bandage the wing to his body (not always effectively).

After the first night, he was moved into a cage in the dining room. Which is pretty much just piled with auction and garage sale junk anyway. Thoroughly enjoying the thawed raspberries and dark cherries, as well as a few sowbugs snatched up from stumps sticking out through the snow.

Being a mere, common robin, there is no way to justify a two-hundred mile trip to ferry him to an experienced, licensed rehabilitator. And no meetings in any of the rahabilitators' towns to warrant hitching him a ride. Not that they wouldn't necessarily do the efficient and professional thing if we had.

Wife and eldest son took on almost all of his care, from the daily rewrapping of the bandage to changing water and thawing fruit. And the wife took to visiting the local sporting goods store several times a week.

For worms. About 12 cents a worm, several worms a day.

He didn't improve, but he didn't falter, either. Staying just as feisty as the first day. The original bandage had coagulated to the wound, so the surplus cloth was trimmed off, the remainder serving as a cast over the injury. After a couple weeks, they no long had to tie the wounded wing down.

But he looked like crap. His tail feathers worn off from constant pacing in the cage. Always towards the window, towards the calls of free robins gathering in the trees out front, chattering to each other again in the morning to start their day. And, of course, I knew he wasn't taking care of his skin and feathers as he ought. Baths in water he had, but no dry dirt for dusting. With no way to keep himself dry, his feathers turned oily.

Today at lunch, as the wife came home for the regular robin feeding, even she agreed.

"He's not going to make it."

The "cast" on the injury had broken free, the wing flipped completely around, the bones obviously not healed. The tissues underneath dead and dry, except for a slip of pink running up along the bones. Warm to the touch, eldest son said.

But it ain't gonna heal. He'll never be a robin again.

So, do we keep him? Perhaps amputate the wing, feed him worms and cherries in a cage forever? Or maybe only another week or two, before his spirits finally concede defeat and he withers away like a cut flower?

Or do we send him back out into the world, knowing he'll be lucky to last a day, maybe a night, too?

"Better a day of freedom than a lifetime of captivity."

I checked on him around three-thirty. He had left the spruce trees where we had released him, where we had watched him hop up the branches one by one until he was a couple feet off the ground. And there he had sat, resting for the first time in weeks, cocking his head at every bird song. Listening, I assume, for someone familiar. His eyes somehow brighter, more alive.

The water we had left was still there, of course, but not the worms. Didn't crawl under the cherry tree to check for the cherries. But the robin was holding his broken wing properly now, snugged hard against his body. If not for the patch of bloodied bandage, you couldn't tell which one wasn't working as he hopped around the brushpile, looking for bugs to eat.

Being a robin again. If only for a day.

By five o'clock, I couldn't find him again.