The Bird Who Couldn’t Be Saved

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I’ve mentioned here and there over the last month that I’d saved three birds from dangers in the garden this summer. One had its leg caught in the leaf of a gladiola stem, another was trapped between a tomato plant and the tomato cage, and the last had its head caught in an opening of the bird feeder, while attempting to get the last few seeds left in it. Each experience left me with the feeling of having been placed in that precise instance for a reason.

The little one in the photograph above is alive as I’m writing this, but I don’t expect he will last very long. He’s been in the back yard for a month now. Initially he could fly a bit, even though his wings were torn. The other birds have been tormenting him, so I’d taken to leaving bread and seeds in places where I knew he was hiding. This morning I found him lying in the grass unable to fly. He won’t eat or take water.

Now I know, this is silly. Birds die all the time. Nature does what it must. But I simply could not let him just die alone and in the dirt. So today, we will sit beside each other and share companionship. I’ll stroke his feathers and tell him that everything will be okay. And wish that someone would tell me the same.

If I hadn’t gone out into the garden, if I hadn’t knelt down at a precise moment or looked to the left or right, I might have missed the struggles of each one of these birds. Slow down and pay attention friends. There are more battles being waged than you know.

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