About a bird
August 16, 2012Anxiety is high around here. August always seems to ratchet up the nerves. Summer has lost its charm, but not its edge. The humidity and the heat and the smells and strangers barking at each other in the street. Hurricanes and tropical storms are coming this way, they keep saying. One after another. Who can say what's next?
I've had conversations with not one, not two, but three loved ones who were beset with (they knew) irrational fears. I feel like I spend most of my time in Reassurance Mode. I'm glad I can be the one who's relatively calm (for once), but then I worry about their worry, because worry is bad for the health.
No one is sleeping. And when we manage it, our dreams are weird.
A few days ago I found a dying baby sparrow on the sidewalk. He blinked fast, flapped his wings, toppled over. His claws were mangled. There was nothing I could do, but I couldn't leave it. My downstairs neighbor came by. We sat down by the bird, in the middle of the sidewalk. Other passersby stopped and weighed in on what could be done. The baby bird kept blinking. I made some phone calls. No one asked why I was bothering with a baby sparrow, which I appreciated, but there was no real help to be found. We murmured to it. The blinks stopped. Mostly we were relieved. We wondered whether we helped the baby bird as it died, or terrified it. We did the best we could. We knew it wasn't much.
Yesterday that same neighbor texted me: "I am not kidding, there's another dead sparrow in our driveway," she wrote.
"Don't worry," I wrote back. "It's just Zombie Sparrow, come to exact revenge."
She was sure there was a bird epidemic. It would just figure, wouldn't it? The heat is rising, birds are dropping from the sky. What's next?
There's no question there's plenty to worry about. There's always a crisis. But I keep thinking how, on one of the hottest days of the year, people came upon two goofballs crouched over a baby bird, and they stopped to see what could be done. I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say is we have each other, which is so cloying, but I mean it. Everything's scary, but we can be pretty great. Even in the middle of August, and everything dying around us.
Reader Comments (36)
Thank you so much. I have tears in my eyes because I am so relieved I am not the only one.
"No one is sleeping. And when we manage it, our dreams are weird." I cannot think of two sentences that sum up more perfectly my life right now and my husband's. September is looming and I feel panicky whenever I see a tree changing colors.
"The trees are tired of being green," John Updike wrote in a poem in one of my son's books. I think of that line every single August and every year I nod and know it and still cannot face it.
You are now my favorite goofball.
This felt like the beginning of a novel. Loved it. Left me wanting more.
Very well written. I'm on the same boat, August has a lot of stress for me.
What a great post! What you did was admirable. I once saved a baby squirrel after a tree had been cut down, crushing the mom to death. I know some people thought I was nuts (literally), but I felt it was the right thing to do and could not have lived with myself if I had just walked away. I bottle fed it for a few weeks until it was really strong and lively, and then turned it into a wildlife rescue. :)
Crystal, I love your story--so glad you got a happy ending!
Lovely.
I know that finding a practical cause for why birds are dying was patently not the point of this beautiful post, but over here with my own anxieties, one thing instantly came to mind in reading this: West Nile. One of the warning signs of West Nile in an area is unusual numbers of birds dying. This comment probably has no practical value, but if I had that experience (two dead birds in two days by my house) I would be checking with local authorities about whether it's in the area since there has been so much of the virus this year. And then I'd be coating myself and my family in scary, scary bug repellents. Not my usual thing, but better than West Nile?
Thank you. This was exactly what I needed. Perfection.
i followed joe's recommendations this afternoon. within 2 hours, a little bird passed on. i did pet it a few times, it didn't seem to mind. thank you , alice and thanks to joe. xx
"It was earthquake weather and everyone knew it." Have you read Fortune's Daughter by Alice Hoffman?