B is for Baby Birds
One day a friend from work dropped by unexpectedly. She handed me a Tupperware container. “Here,” she said, “I thought maybe you could do something with these guys.”
I cautiously pulled back the cracked plastic lid. Inside was a little nest with three naked, shriveled baby birds in it. My friend had found the nest in a tractor she’d borrowed the day before from someone who lived two long-apart towns over. “I found them this morning. I’m afraid I’ve moved them far away from their mother.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. I knew how futile this would be, but somehow, I just could not say no. I took the baby birds in my hand, not allowing myself to register how cold and still they felt. I put my hand under my shirt and pressed them to my skin. Sure enough in about five minutes they were squirming. Just barely, but enough to light something in me. Maybe they would live.
I made a new nest for them in a cardboard box and shone a desk lamp with a hundred-watt bulb on them for heat. I set about feeding them tiny bits of bread soaked in egg, offered on the tip of a toothpick. They ate. With every crumb that slid down one of their stringy little necks, I rejoiced in spite of myself. There was hope in this world after all.
This dunking bread into egg and feeding tiny gaping mouths was familiar ground for me. There had been many baby birds in my life: baby wrens, jays, crows, and a killdeer to name a few of the ones who made it to adulthood. There were just as many who did not.
When I was in high school my stepmother Janie and my Dad raised a baby owl. That’s even more illegal than raising baby songbirds, or even baby wrens. Whoever was the first to stumble into the kitchen in the mornings, pre-coffee, was greeted by the ravenous little hoot owl, who would open his mouth wide and make the most endearing and awful screeching until someone plopped some liver down his throat. We lived like criminals raising that little owl. After work, Janie and my dad would take the owl and disappear to friends’ houses until my brother and I were in bed. “If anyone’s looking for us, it’s better if you don’t know where we are. That way you don’t have to lie.”
I thought it was overkill until someone from the Department of the Interior managed to get Janie on the phone. He demanded she surrender the owl. “Look,” she explained, “I’m just raising this owl. As soon as it can fly, I promise, I’m giving it back to God.”
“Lady, that owl doesn’t belong to God,” he responded. “It belongs to the Unites States of America.”
Somehow we beat the USA, though, and raised that owl until he was ready to be released. As with all releases, it was bittersweet but beautiful to see him fly back into the tree tops.
All these memories flooded my brain like an easy balm as I tended these baby birds. Thinking back on the owl especially tickled a part of my brain that thrilled to have a baby bird in the house. Still, I stressed to our three young daughters that it was highly unlikely these little guys would live. “We’re doing it for the birds, not for us,” I reminded them as their eager faces peered into the cardboard box. “Be prepared. They will probably die,” I said over and over, but in my heart I recognized a tiny flame of hope.
In the morning I raced into the kitchen, desperately hoping to find three energetic little creatures hungrily awaiting their morning meal. Instead I found two very quiet birds, and one who was stone cold dead. Before anyone else woke up, I took it outside and quickly buried it behind the shed. Oh, the poor little thing. Brave little thing. Tiny, defenseless little thing. I pushed my sadness down.
I tended the other two with even more fervor, making sure they did not get chilled, and offering them food every few minutes. I stared at their odd little scrambled egg lips, which I found especially cute. “Eat,” I willed them. “Eat!”
“Will these two live?” the girls asked all too hopefully.
“Probably not, but it’s our job to do what we can, and keep them comfortable no matter what.” I felt a terrible responsibility to the mother bird, who doubtless was confused at finding her nest gone without a trace. I pushed the image of her, scraggly insect hanging out of her mouth, sitting on a nearby piece of machinery, panicked by her trustworthy bird instincts failing inexplicably, out of my mind.
The next morning I cautiously peeked into the box and lifted the small rag off the nest. Another baby bird had died. The last living bird lay resting its head on the dead bird’s body, huddling for warmth and finding none.
I tried not to think about it. They barely even had their nervous systems yet. They were fresh from the egg. You could see their veins through their skin. They were rubbery-necked still. They certainly had no attachments to sibling birds, no sadness, in their little brains.
I buried the second bird behind the shed next to its sibling.
I wanted the last one to live. I wanted him to wake me up at night squawking for food. I wanted him to poop all over the house while he learned to fly. I wanted him to sing and feather a nest. I wanted him to live high in the trees, to fly with his friends, to live free as…a bird.
“Let’s go see the bird guy,” I said to the girls. We piled in the car with the bird in the box and took him to our friend who is the local expert.
“No way,” our friend said. “These little insectivores are almost impossible to raise.” He took a little bug he had on hand, tore it apart, and tried to shove it into the baby bird’s mouth. The baby bird did not respond. “He doesn’t have the strength to swallow.”
The car ride home was very quiet.
At home, I just sat and held the bird. The thought of putting it back into its nest alone was more than I could bear. Eventually the tiny bird slowed and cooled and died in my hands.
In one forgiving bit of grace, the girls took it better than I did. I guess they believed all my warnings and assurances that the birds likely would not live. I’d worked hard to convince myself of the same thing. I knew all along the birds would probably die. But still. But still.
Back out to the shed I went, this time with the last little bird wrapped up in a paper towel. I dug his little grave, laid a rock over it, and bound two sticks together to make a cross for the three of them.
And then I cried.
I cried because their mother did not know what happened to them and I couldn’t tell her. I cried because I couldn’t save the baby birds. My chest heaved in heavy, choking sobs. I could not save the birds. I could not save my brother. I could not save anyone, not any anguished mothers and sisters and fathers and brothers. I could not even save myself.
I lifted my face to the darkening sky and cried because the world is sad.
Originally published at http://marydansak.blogspot.com.
