Woman Turns Her Apartment Into a Medical Clinic for Hummingbirds

Catia Lattouf and an assistant run a medical clinic and rehab center for hummingbirds in her Mexico City apartment.

With dozens of the tiny birds buzzing overhead, along walls and the window of her bedroom, Lattouf explained that she began caring for them a year after surviving colon cancer in 2011. It started with one hummingbird that had an eye injured by another bird.

A veterinarian friend encouraged her to try to help it. She named it Gucci after the brand of the glasses case she kept it in. The bird became her inseparable companion, perching on her computer screen while she worked.

“It wrote me a new life,” she said of the nine months the bird lived with her.

I’m not entirely sure I’d like 60 hummingbirds constantly flitting around my house, but I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t like that either.

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• Catia Lattouf
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