One of the most interesting and best-known characters in the capital area died at the end of 2002 but there was little fanfare -- probably because he was a bird.

His name was Mojo and for almost two decades he was the mascot at the Ottawa Wild Bird Care Centre on Moodie Drive. More than that, he was the official greeter, welcoming tens of thousands of visitors, including school classes on educational outings. He was the narrator and author of five children's books published by the centre. Jackie Green, an author in her own right, did the typing.

He appeared over the years in three of these columns, and his picture appeared twice in other Citizen news stories -- once on the front page. Saturday, his passing was noted in a few lines at the bottom of Elizabeth Le Geyt's bird column. She keeps track of the migrations. I write the obituaries.

Mojo the crow appeared at the centre in 1984, delivered by a humane society worker. It was assumed he had fallen from the nest. A theory would develop later that he had likely been discarded. Nature doesn't waste time on the weak and the little bird had genetic defects. He would never fly and he had an albino gene that gave unusual white tips to his wings and tail.

At first Kathy Nihei, founder of the centre, didn't see the defects. She saw only a hungry baby. Ordinarily the centre would not waste resources on a critter that could not be returned to the wild. By the time she realized she had a flightless crow on her hands, bonding had occurred. Mojo had charmed the birdwoman.

Over the years, Kathy often walked around with Mojo on an arm. He sometimes rode backwards with his face in her neck, making uncrowlike sounds. He seemed to be murmuring. She would place her lips beside his beard and make almost identical sounds. They were communicating. No translator was needed. They were saying they loved each other.

Mojo never reached full size for a crow, but he did something most other crows never manage: He lived to be 19 years old. At 12 a crow is old. At 15 it's geriatric.

In a way, Mojo became a lifesaver. In 1986 somebody dropped off a small red hen found wandering in traffic on Woodroffe Avenue. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been moved to a farm and possibly a dinner table. But Mojo became her protector and the unusual pairing appealed to staff and volunteers. Mojo and Clara became inseparable.

"They ate and slept together, and preened together,'' Kathy recalled. Animals don't have the emotions needed to mourn, but don't tell that to people at the bird centre. When Clara died in 1991, they say, Mojo was unconsolable.

I've often watched and marvelled at the reactions of injured birds in the hands of the birdwoman. They go from panicked to placid when she touches them. They also tend to protect her. Walk into the centre's big flight cage with Kathy and fake aggression in her direction and watch what happens. Protect your face. Mojo spent most of his life in that big cage and because he was flightless he never perched high. As he got older his perches got lower.

About two years ago he started tipping over. He'd fall off his perch and somebody would have to tip him back up again. "His feet got too weak and he couldn't grip the perch.'' And his balance never was the best.

They set him up in a small room with a window near the front desk so he could watch the comings and goings. His appetite stayed good and his greetings noisy: he was still on duty.

"He knew his time was up,'' says Kathy. "You could sense it. It was time to help him over the bridge.'' In her world there's a Rainbow Bridge between the world of the living and that of the dead. It's from a poem she liked but barely remembers. There's no discrimination in the land on the other side of that bridge. It accepts people and their critters.

"We talked and I gave him the help he needed and held him while he crossed the bridge. I told him I'd meet him there. I'll bury him in the spring when the ground thaws.''

There's already a pathway at the centre called Mojo Lane. His books remain available at the centre for $5.