It was a tough evening. I have been slowly
recovering from an injury to my lower back, and sitting and driving continue to
be uncomfortable (at best). Our kids were in activities at opposite ends of the
city, and my husband was out of town, so I spent over two hours simply driving:
back and forth, back and forth. When we arrived home, I was in agony, and
headed straight for my anti-gravity lawn chair as if pulled by a magnetic
force. I sunk back and sighed.
The evening was nice, so despite the late hour,
I let the kids play outside. As I gazed out the picture window at the front of our
house, I saw our three kids and the neighbor’s three kids gathered in a closed
circle, staring down intently at the ground. I watched. Suddenly Yohannes came
sprinting back to the house, and flew through the front door. He told me that a
baby bird had fallen out of its nest.
"Oh, sometimes that happens", I
absently acknowledged. He left.
The neighbor’s kids went inside, leaving my
kids in charge of the casualty. I still hadn’t actually seen the bird and
assumed that it was a baby that had simply hopped out of the nest, almost ready
to fly. I had seen it many times before. A speckled baby, almost full grown, hopping
across the grass, enjoying its new found freedom, with a protective mother or
father swooping overhead or perching nearby.
However, when I saw Faven gingerly carrying a
plastic bag over to our front deck, I saw a small—seemingly lifeless—“being”
cradled in the middle. All three of our kids gathered around; Faven was crying
and stroking the little bird, Laurèn was pacing and plotting, and Yohannes was
whittling a stick with a pocketknife. When I heard Laurèn say,
"I am going to gather some worms, you keep it warm", I reluctantly
climbed out of my resting place and went outside. All three kids looked up
at me, expectantly.
“Guys…… come on, I want you to come in the
house; it's time to get ready for bed” I said, unmoved and (even) irritated.
“What!” said Faven, “We can't leave it.”
“We have to, there's nothing we can do,” I
replied.
“Please Mom, we have to help it,” Laurèn said, while tugging
gently on my arm.
I took a deep breath, trying to find the right
words, “Guys” I started, “Sometimes nature is just hard. I’m sorry that
the little bird fell out of the tree. But, I don’t think there is anything that
we can do, it’s simply too small.”
Faven’s eyes were misty as she trapped my gaze,
“He didn't fall out of the tree. His mom pushed him out. We have to help him.”
“Well” I faltered, “sometimes the mom does
that. But, we can’t look after a baby bird.”
“Please Mom,” begged Laurèn, “we
have to give it a try”.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“I can get some worms and feed him,” she said.
“Oh” I mocked, “You are going to chew up the
worms, swallow them, and then spit them up into the baby birds’ beak?” Her
expression and withdrawal told me that I had gone too far.
“I don’t know what we can do to help,” I
admitted. (Silently, I thought: It’s just
one bird).
Laurèn
rested her head against my shoulder looking up at me, while Faven pleaded, “He's
so cute mom… please.”
I gazed at him lying awkwardly on the hard
wooden deck with the thin plastic “bed” crumpled beneath him, his head angled
upwards, his body resembled an over-sized scrotum—less the feathers. Cute? I
thought not.
Laurèn
continued, “Mom, we have
to. Give me your phone; I will look up wildlife rescue. We have to try Mom”.
Yohannes whittled, and looked up at me with
raised eyebrows as if to say, I think they have a point.
“Okay” I ruefully responded, “We’ll figure it
out”.
Yohannes quietly said, “Thanks Mom”.
After about twenty minutes on the phone, with
three different people, I finally got some information from the Calgary
Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (CWRS). The woman who answered the phone
at CWRS asked me some questions about the bird: Is it hopping around? No,
it’s lying on its side with its eyes closed. Does it have feathers? Well,
it is mostly just fuzzy, but there are some things that resemble feathers on its
wings. Is it moving? Yes, it’s
breathing and occasionally moving.
She advised me to
take it to the nearest Veterinary Hospital, and gave me the address. I walked
into the house, and away from the kids and asked her, “Will they take the baby
bird no matter what, because my kids are pretty distressed, and I don’t want to
bring it home with me again?” She calmly told me that they would definitely
take it, and try and keep it warm until the CWRS could come and pick it up in
the morning. The way she said it made me (all of a sudden) believe that
rescuing baby birds was a normal thing to do.
The kids packed up the bird and we headed off
to the Calgary North Veterinary Hospital. Faven held the box on her lap, and Laurèn asked
her every two minutes how the baby (who they named "Beak") was doing.
Reality TV really doesn't get any better than this.
We arrived in the deserted parking lot of the hospital
- and headed in. Yohannes was still carrying the stick and the
pocketknife. Laurèn
now had the box. I sheepishly told the admission staff that the kids found a
baby bird in our front yard. I still expected someone to say, “So what!” But,
instead, they treated that baby bird as if it was a treasure.
While I did the "admission" paperwork for Beak, the triage staff
called on the overhead, "Steve, wildlife admission at the front." The
kids were elated. I was stunned – wildlife??
Steve came out, and looked into our box and said, "Wow, this one has
feathers, he is a lot older than all the other ones that have come in. He's
cute." (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess). Steve thanked the
kids directly, and just like that Beak was out of our care.
The kids were so excited by the turn-of-events
that they chattered and chirped like a flock of birds, all the way home. We got
home just before 10:00 pm, and I tried to will them to settle down and go to
bed. Eventually, they did. However, even after they were settled, I couldn’t
stop thinking about the helpless bird. Why had it fallen into our care? Didn’t
I have enough to look after—teaching my own “fallen” birds to stand on their
own, and one day fly?
I felt a cold, detachment to this living creature
that my children had immediately embraced. Initially, I was “put-out” by the
fact that something was required of me. I was not grateful for this opportunity;
I simply felt bone-tired. And then, when it felt like the kids and I were at an
impasse, I had the briefest moment of clarity. Parenting is unpredictable and
inconvenient at its best. Because of unexpected events, our heads are turned in
a different direction, and our minds are opened to something otherwise hidden.
The life or death of the baby bird was inconsequential to the experience—this
was about supporting my children as they faced life. So, I turned towards them
and their charge, and found the foot steps right alongside of them. I know that
they were changed because of it, and (perhaps) so was I.
