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Among Friends |
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| Accepting the responsibilities of life My husband has a quirky sense of humor. So when he said, just out of view on the porch, "Houston, we've got a problem," I didn't know if he was having a heart attack or needed a second cup of coffee. Turns out that it was neither. Cradled in his hands was a beehive-sized bird's nest that he'd found abandoned in the empty schoolyard the day before. Because he's an artist who's always on the lookout for interesting subjects, he picked it up and put it in the truck bed then promptly forgot about it. Twenty-four hours and two rainstorms later, he was ready to sketch the empty nest -- except it wasn't empty. Gently pushing aside bits of twig, feathers and woven grass, he showed me two yellow-rimmed open mouths. Faint chirping -- sounds of near starvation -- were coming out of them. By the time our veterinarian called hours later to facetiously warn Dean, "Don't sit on the nest too hard," we'd become surrogate parents to a pair of sparrow chicks. We used a gum-rinsing dental syringe to poke pureed baby food down their tiny gullets every hour. A towel-draped shoebox made a cozy home; my husband's goose-necked reading light doubled as a heat lamp; and Daisy the guard dog took her battle station to ward off TiTi, the curious carnivore cat. We'd intended to wash windows, plant flower boxes and squeeze in a brisk walk. Instead, we hovered over the baby birds, taking turns coaxing them to open those spastically gaping beaks long enough to eat and drink enough to stay alive. My husband played Mozart; their frantic chirping subsided. When he segued to Debussy, they stopped struggling against their paper-towel bedding. "They like Beethoven best," he said, calling me over during the Adagio Cantabile from "Pathetique" to observe them snuggled against each other, sound asleep. We'd rush about doing a few chores until we'd hear the chirping, then grab the syringe of mooshed-up vegetable beef and poke some more into their reviving little bodies. My husband took the midnight-to-6 a.m. shift by himself, and when I woke up he was exultant: "They're doing great!" But we thought we couldn't keep up with their demands, that we would somehow fail them if they stayed under our inexperienced wing. We turned to the director of our privately funded animal rescue center for help. He said he'd take the birds we'd named "Eek" (the loud one) and "Meek" (the weaker one) if we could get them to him. Young friends volunteered to make the two-hour drive to the "Boo Boo Zoo." We gently stroked the tiny sparrows' half-naked pink backs, smoothed their few feathers and tucked them under a clean towel. Then -- with tears in our eyes and high hopes -- we carefully handed them over, accompanied by a note to the director asking him to phone us with an update. The next day, when hours dragged by without the director's call, we telephoned him. "You did a great job!" he said. "When they got here they were in terrific shape!" We were so relieved that we were slow to absorb his next words. "What? I didn't hear you," I said. " ... which is why I feel so bad," the director said. I asked him to repeat the first part of his sentence. "I lost them," he said. Lost? It took me a full minute to grasp his meaning. "You mean they're gone? Dead?" I blurted. "I'm so sorry," he said, then repeated when I failed to respond. "Sometimes, for no apparent reason, we lose them. The weaker one died last night; the other succumbed this morning. I don't know what happened. Maybe it was something I did wrong. "Again, I'm so sorry." Two tiny birds fell out of a tree and into our lives, forcing us to try to do our best. For a while, that was good enough. Then we got cold feet and passed the buck. Would Eek and Meek still be alive if we'd kept them? There's no way to answer that question. But the moral of our little story, said my husband, is that, "We need to accept responsibilities life hands us; trust ourselves enough to do what we think is right; and stick with the problem until it's been solved." When our little birds' nest fell out of the tree, we all took a hard landing. |
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