My sense of wonder is seriously “adulterated.” I’m too busy looking for work as a media marketing producer and raising a family. I don’t have much time for such grandiose concerns as nature.
That all changed last summer when my wife, Andrea, called me outside and asked me to help keep two hopping baby birds from frying in the hot sun against the far wall of our backyard.
Busy at work on my computer, I grudgingly headed to the calamity, expecting to offer a brief but effective helping hand. I figured I would move them to the shade and give them a little saucer of water. Then I’d watch them chirp gratefully and fly off to live happily ever after.
It didn’t quite turn out that way.
The two birds refused the water. One took off into the shrubs, never to be seen again. That seemed to me like Nature “doing its thing,” the way it should be. I didn’t worry about that birdie. But the second little guy just sat baking in the sun, refusing to move. He seemed to be passively accepting a very dire fate. I picked him up. He chirped as if thanking me. I could see he was not injured: legs toothpick thin but steady. Wings very short but feathered. Eyes looking up at me alertly, mouth wide open.
Of course, that’s what did it. That needy, desperate, adorable open mouth. As he sat there in my hand, a little feathered ball of warmth, he said to me, “I’m starving, and it will be on your conscience if you don’t feed and take care of me, starting right now.”
I looked up “feeding wild baby birds” online and discovered my pushy little friend was a mockingbird. I fixed a nice sampler of cottage cheese, canned dog-food bits, soaked cut-up raisins, mashed egg yolk and water from an eyedropper. I hand-fed him right off the tip of my obsessively washed index finger. He ate like Godzilla munching New York City.
It soon became clear that he would need round-the-clock care. But I was hooked. Nothing was going to keep my birdie from growing safely and flying off to the great bird’s life in the sky. I made up a box with straw and put him on a bench under our one shade tree. He jumped up onto the bench back and sat there happily for hours.
Over the next few days our bond deepened into something totally unexpected. I became one with that bird, and with nature. I forced him to hop across the yard so that he could practice flapping his weak little wings. At night he slept protected in the box in our guest bathroom. When he first flew to a low branch of the tree, I worried. I knew he was still days away from having strong wings and tail feathers, and being ready to actually fly up, up and away.
So as the days passed and his excursions lengthened, I would end up looking far into the tree. His coloring made him almost invisible. I repeatedly called out to locate him. Finally he would chirp, “Up here!” I willingly climbed up into the tree to get him, bring him back down and feed him.
Against my nature I was risking limb, if not life, for my little winged buddy. I was climbing into a tall tree, leaning into thornbushes that left me bloody, just to get that guy in time for his next meal. At dusk I was searching shrubs with a flashlight in order to bring him in and make his night safe.
On the sixth day he flew across the yard and spent his first night in the shrubs by himself. The next day I saw him there in the sun and, misty-eyed, gave him one last dropper of water. I knew my job was done. I haven’t seen him since.
Look, I’m no bleeding-heart tree hugger, but this encounter has made some things crystal clear: that in our race to live more comfortably, we have mercilessly plundered our planet and exploited it at our own peril. Nature, the awesome environment that supports us in our own struggle to survive, needs our care. It needs our commitment to a reverence for all life.
So little birdie, thank you for teaching me. I will always remember your incredible beauty, and be in awe of our world, for as long as I am a part of it.
