Ah, Springtime in the Midwest. Hard ground yeilds and turns soggy. Plants, burst everywhere, full of hope. The soft air, filled with the perfume of tender blossoms, intoxicates. Our lawn, a small domain of nature in abbreviated glory, is lush with excitement. Our lawn, like many others in the neighborhood had been impishly punctuated with tiny, baby birds, freshly orphaned.
When I almost accidently step on one, my naive, childish trust in the rightness of the world was shattered forever like a dirty bomb transforming all of my true feelings into a puff of radioactive dust.
The bird was a baby robin. Its beak was wider than its skull and very cartiledge like but opened and closed at a calm, mechanical rate like a heart beat. When it’s beak reached it’s full span in the open mouth position, it appeared as if the head had actually turned itself inside out. I observed this function for some time more and eventually it occured to me that this bird was in need of some food. I panicked when I began to believe that the bird might starve to death, right then and there, with me taking no action. I thought fast: “What do birds eat?” The answers bombarded me, in rapid fire: “…bugs…mites…that’s a type of bug, so I already said that…worms, yes worms are bird food…NO TIME TO DIG UP WORMS…what are worms? slimy strips of muscle?…what’s a muscle made out of…HAMBURGER!”
I found a cardboard box in the garage and carefully transferred the baby bird into it. It peed all over me during transport. I became more frantic. The bird was still in danger of starvation. Dashing to the kitchen, I grabbed a package of hamburger out of the fridge and carefully rationed out an appropriate amount to feed the bird (which any child knows instinctively, is about the size of a golf ball).
I ran back to the starving bird, rolling the hamburger between the palms of my hands, waiting to catch that perfect open beaked moment to feed the bird. Time stood still.The moment I dropped the meat ball from my hands, so elegantly in slow motion , I had a new realization “It’s the wrong shape!! NOT ball shaped, should be A WORM SHAPE!“. It was too late. The bird ‘caught’ the meat ball right in it’s beak, kindof sputtered and died instantly.
I can’t say if the impact of the meat ball hitting the bird killed it or if it suffocated from the meat ball blocking it’s air passage. I was sorry that I accidently killed the bird, I was trying to save it. I did learn a lot about how sneaky nature is, that day.
WOW – what a great way to celebrate our loving animals! Tell their stories -good and bad!
I never knew I needed a blog like this until I found it! Not that I like it when animals die, but can’t wait for the next episode!