Nothing...
Two weeks ago I had an incident that hit me really hard
and actually made things worse. It won't make sense to some, heck, it didn't make sense to me but after a lot of thought I've come to understand it a little better. And since it was a part of this insanity, I'm going to write about it here.
At dinner one night on our screened porch a little bird had landed on our feeder. It is just maybe two
feet from the table that we eat most meals at. As I was watching him he literally flew at us
and hit the screen and then began to struggle to fly at all. I knew something was wrong with the little
bird but he managed to fly onto a lower limb in a tree close by so we finished up with dinner and went inside. The next morning I went out and began to look around for him. In a few minutes I saw the still struggling
little bird had managed to get down the hill from the house into some low-growing juniper
and had apparently found refuge in the thick greenery there on the
ground. He caught my eye as he hopped upward fluttering
around trying to fly up from the ground and get airborne. No more than three minutes after I walked out to try and find him he
fluttered up and then right back down and right into our lake! I
panicked. Screaming for my husband to go
get a dip net or the little Jon boat and come and get him out. It hopped up and down in the water but the
little wings that already weren’t working too well were now wet and he
could only manage a few inches before he fell back into the water. I stood
on the side of the bank calling to him trying to give him some bearings as to
where land was; hoping he could limp his way to the bank or that my
husband could get the dip net there in time.
The little bird continued to struggle and I found myself praying out loud for God to
please not let the little bird die. Let me be able to save him and not watch
him struggle and then die right in front of me.
I just did not think I could take anymore death. The little bird sat there struggling about
five minutes and then he just got still, and quietly rolled under the
water.
I just lost it.
Sobbing hysterically
and literally railing at God and my husband and life in general. I cried on and off for a solid week - over a dead bird. Later when I’d calmed down while trying to make
sense of my crazed reaction to an obviously sick or injured bird, I realized in
some ways the little bird represented so much more to me. The whole episode made me think of what I’d
said about the survivor from a shipwreck I described in an earlier post (Shipwrecked). The little bird did just like I said the
survivor would do when all hope was lost – it struggled until it’s will to live
depleted and it then just gave up and quietly slipped under the water. At the time, I wrote that, I completely
understood the fight to live as long as you had hope but when you saw your hopes
of living through your crisis dashed over and over and though you prayed --help never came. And death loomed large on the horizon. At some point, just for
the relief you would just quit fighting and quietly let go. To me, in some crazy way the little bird
represented my struggle
to make it through this though I continue to hope and pray for relief nothing gets better and I think I loosely equated his fate with mine.
The following week – one week to the day exactly after the
little bird drowned, I was driving home from work and a mile from home in the
middle of the road sat a little bird. I
assumed it would fly away to safety when I got closer but as I passed I realized I had not
seen him move. When I looked back in the
rear view mirror, the little bird though only a foot away as my car went past
at about 30 MPH - just sat there.
He was almost on the yellow line right in the middle of the
road. I stopped the car and put it in
reverse, backed up expecting to find the little bird actually dead or broken but there it sat --huddled
down and looking terrified but alive. I
got out of the car and reached for the little bird. It sat there still while I picked it up but
as soon as I did he lowered his head and closed his eyes. I drove the rest of the way home holding the
tiny injured bird in one hand figuring he wouldn’t live fifteen minutes but after
the prior week --I just had to try. I
came home and fixed him a little box with some tree limbs and leaves in it;
warmed a hand towel in the dryer and made a little “nest” and sat the little
bird in the center surrounded by the warmth of the towel. Immediately he opened his eyes and started
looking around. I put him on my screened
porch where all the birds outside were feeding, chirping, flying around just on
the other side of the screen and left him while I went to change clothes and
start dinner. About twenty minutes later
I went out to check on the little bird half expecting him to have died but
instead I couldn’t find him. He wasn’t
in the box anywhere. I looked around and
there he sat on the ledge of the porch three feet above the box! I went to pick him up and he flew to the
other side of the porch where his feet got stuck in the screen. I walked over and carefully unhung his nails
from the screen and set him outside on the deck rail and to my delight he promptly flew away!
What does it all mean? I'm not completely sure but I do feel that he was another gift.
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