Matthew 6:26 (NLT) says, “Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?”
My encounters with birds have been few. Except for me saving the birds that have smacked into my windows from my outdoor cat, who probably would have loved to attack them, most of these encounters have not ended well. The one bird that I “rescued” while it was still alive didn’t end well at all. Smoky (now dead), one of my indoor/outdoor cats, had caught the bird and relieved it of all of its tail feathers and then just left it alive to suffer, leaving it for me to deal with.
Then there was a mama bird, probably a Carolina Wren, who decided to build a nest in which to lay her eggs just inside a tool shed on my back deck. I had the pleasure of watching these baby birds grow up and then take flight to start living the adventure of their lives. So that was a successful and enjoyable encounter.
One morning, I walked into my kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, and then leaned against the dishwasher as I took that first wonderful sip. I glanced across the room at the back of my stove, and much to my amazement, sitting on top of a Cream of Wheat tin, a baby bird was staring back at me. Honestly, that was the last thing I expected to see. What did I do? I said, “Well, hi there. Good morning.”
Once I recovered from my shock and had drank a bit more coffee, I wondered how that baby bird had managed to fly to the back of my stove without being attacked by one of my many cats. I have no idea. More important, how did it get into my house? I still don’t know how either of those things happened.
My brilliant idea was to catch this bird in a pillowcase. Did I succeed? Yes, but not before my cats were made aware of the bird’s presence and began chasing after it. Before I caught it, one of my cats latched onto it with his mouth but didn’t kill it. If the cat actually broke his skin, I’m pretty sure that the baby bird didn’t last long after I released him outside, but I have no way of knowing. He could have lived for many years, telling his young and then his grandchildren about the time he was chased by multiple cats and a crazy lady with a pillowcase. He (or she) could have become a legend in his community.
Today was a rainy day, so my dogs, who are not fans of having water constantly come down from the sky making them wet, didn’t really want to spend much time outside. But I took them out this morning during a break in what to them was a terrible phenomena.
I was standing out in the yard with them when I noticed something at my feet. At first glance, it appeared to be a piece of trash, maybe a piece of paper that had drifted away from the burn pile in the slight breeze. Before I picked it up, I stopped and froze. It wasn’t a piece of trash as I had originally thought. It was a dead bird.
I needed to pick up its dead body before Piper, a mountain cur mix, discovered its presence and took off with it. Leesi, a much older dog, had already sniffed the bird, but she wasn’t really interested in it. I’ve always heard that touching or picking up a dead bird with my bare hands could be bad news, so I used a few paper towels to pick it up. This bird had had a life. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but I know it wasn’t confused in any way about its gender. It could have had a mate, it could have had children. I highly doubt it had a job. Well, if it came from a community of birds, maybe its job was to go out and gather food for all of them. Who knows?
I’m sure this bird will be missed by its family and friends, maybe even its loss mourned by them. I believe it was a Carolina Wren, but I’m not one hundred percent sure. I do know that a bit of blood was transferred to the paper towels when I picked it up off the ground.
Questions sprung up in my mind. How did it end up dead in my fenced-in back yard? Did it die while flying over my yard? Had it collided with one of the many trees surrounding my year? Did it grow so weak it could no longer fly and landed in my yard to breathe its last?
Why did it leave blood on the paper towels? Had it been injured by a predator or perhaps shot? I didn’t examine its little body long enough to figure that one out. I was curious, yes, but once I thought of examining it a bit closer, I had already laid the poor bird to rest away from where any of my. animals could get hold of it.
Writing Prompt:
But that is where you come in. Write a story about the adventures of this bird, where he came from, what happened to him, and how he met his end.
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