McLOUD, OK -- When severe weather rolls through Oklahoma – we rarely hear about the tiniest casualties.
This is Grace. She’s almost a year old now, thanks to some inmates at Mabel Basset Correctional Center. Inmate Joy Kaulaity said, “It was last June when the weather was bad and stuff. She got washed out and she was a little bitty baby. The women brought her to me because during my incarceration I used to rescue baby birds and set them back out.”
Joy Kaulaity has become her surrogate parent. Grace seems to like the TLC here and has no desire to fly the coop. According to Kaulaity, “She’s pretty smart and stuff. We call her the little princess because she thinks she’s human sometimes.”
They’ve built her a birdhouse using scrap wood around the prison, though she rarely spends any time inside. Instead, Grace visits the sick and aging inmates on the medical unit. And she’s quite popular on the yard. Kaulaity said, “She brings smiles to everybody. Whenever I see anybody on the yard and they are having a bad day, I take her out and she brings them life back.” Grace and Joy provide a ray of light in a sometimes dark environment.
Sometimes it takes a storm to bring Grace to the most unexpected places.
