Strongly Worded

Little Brown Bird

So I was walking along in the unseasonably warm weather, with a new CD in my discman. Somehow, in spite of the sporadic drizzle, the Monday morning traffic, the loud music, and my own self-absorbed thoughts, I noticed a struggle at my feet.

In the middle of the sidewalk, a little brown bird fluttered. It was an ordinary bird, the kind you see all over the city, without noticing it for its commonplaceness. For the first time, I appreciated the perky roundness of the bird's body, and its crisply engineered wings. I watched the bird as it tried with bursts of thwarted energy--to right itself. The bird was off-kilter, badly unbalanced, and its nearly silent effort was heartbreaking in its futility. I couldn't tell what was wrong with the bird, maybe it had fallen out of the tree, and broken a wing--maybe it was diseased somehow, and it was crippled by vertigo. I bent over the bird, willing it to right itself and fly away.

I knew there was nothing I could do to help, and I wished I'd stayed on the other side of the street, so as not to witness this suffering, and be touched by it. Luckily another woman stopped as well, and we traded possible diagnoses. Gradually we concluded that we should try to scoop it off the sidewalk, so that it could continue struggling without the added risk of being trampled by pedestrians. We each had a bag from HMV, and we used our two new CD cases to scoop the bird off the sidewalk and into the brush. The bird didn't look any happier there--but I noticed the way it blended perfectly into the wood chips and softer ground at the edge of the curb. A few bushes provided privacy, shade. If the bird was going to die I felt better about it dying surrounded by earth and bushes. Both the woman and I wanted to leave, but something about the situation made us feel that this would be callous. I said a few times that I wish I could help somehow, but that probably even a vet wouldn't be able to do much. We watched the bird spin in the softer dirt, its wings furling uselessly in rhythmic, feathery spurts. A third woman with a backpack joined our caucus. She said that she'd go and get her roommate, who was great with animals and would know who to call--wildlife rescue or a vet or whatever. This was a tremendous relief. We could leave now. We thanked her for relieving us of the responsibility of the injured bird.

And then we left--3 women brought together briefly, swept back into the swirl of city life. I watched the first woman as she disappeared down the street. Like me, she'd disposed of her HMV bag in the trash can on the corner. I have no idea what happened to the little brown bird. Since then, I see the birds everywhere, and I try to look closely at them, and see how pretty they are. But they're skittish and savvy, and fly away before I can approach.

Posted by Dori at 11:15 PM