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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
As he was leaving for work yesterday, D noticed a baby bird trapped between the upper and lower sashes of the workshop window, where it is half open to accommodate a window-unit air conditioner. The bird’s parents were flying frantically around the outside of the window, chirping at their trapped fledgling, as he chirped back, helpless.
D tried to get the bird out, but he couldn’t and didn’t have time to pursue it further, so he called me and told me about the situation.
I went out and tried to apply my mad problem-solving skills, but the only thing I could come up with was to stand on a chair, poke a stick in the space between the windows, coax the bird onto it, then lift him out to safety. Which would’ve worked fine if the bird didn’t view the stick as the Jabberwocky and scurry away every time it came near. I tried to push the stick underneath his chest and kinda squash the little guy against the glass and lift him out, but he refused to cling on and kept falling off.
After many, many minutes of this in the stifling workshop, I was sweating, frustrated, and on the verge of tears. I couldn’t leave him, and I couldn’t help him.
It had already been an emotional day. Our adoption coordinator had told us about another little boy, this one 8 years old, whose parents are recently divorced and believe he needs a two-parent home (he has ADHD and some behavior issues). They sent photos, and we saw that he was a handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy with a very big smile. From the pics, he looked well-cared for and happy, and we couldn’t imagine how anyone could let him go.
Still, D was freaked out by the fact that he’s 8. For some reason, 6-almost-7 is okay for him, but 8 is the tipping point. I guess there has to be one, though for me I think it would be 9 or 10. Our preferences say we will accept up to age 6, but it’s much easier to set such a limit when you’re not looking into the eyes of a little boy who needs a home. It’s not his fault he’s one year too old or that he’s trapped in this bad situation.
I tried to talk D into reconsidering. I tried to explain to him how I feel - this boy, and the last, and all the children we’ve considered before, haven’t necessarily been what we envisioned when we started this process, but I want to be flexible and leave something up to chance. If our profile was shown for this situation, and we were picked, then he would be our son. That would be that, and we wouldn’t wonder about all the perfect infants we’d missed out on. We’d just love him.
But D proved surprisingly inflexible on this, so at last I realized we couldn’t proceed. I can cajole him into most things he initially doesn’t want to do, and he is usually grateful for it later, but in the case of the child that will be ours forever, even I can recognize he needs to be fully on board.
Still, the boy is on my mind. His face was the first thing I thought of when I woke this morning, knowing I would have to send the e-mail that ruled him out as a possibility.
He was in my head yesterday afternoon while I tried to save the bird, and maybe he is the reason that I finally did a stupid thing. I realized the only way to get the bird out was to take out the air conditioner. I eased it out a little at a time, testing its weight. I knew I shouldn’t try to do it by myself, but - I reasoned - I’m stronger now. I could even see muscles popping out on my arms as I shifted more of its weight out of the window, and I was proud of myself. I would do it myself. I would save the bird.
I had readied the chair nearby to set the air conditioner on, but I didn’t make it that far. Suddenly, too late, I realized most of the weight of the air conditioner was in the back, and there was no way I could hang onto it. It slid from my arms and landed, intact, on its back on the side of a half-rotten old mantel propped against the wall. I stared at my forearms, which were scraped vivid red and burning all over with pain. I wanted to stop and howl, but instead I moved the chair back over and climbed up again. I tried to close the window, forcing my screaming arms to push down with all their might, but the window wouldn’t budge. The baby bird chirped and chirped for his parents, who had flitted away to a tree nearby. That’s when I noticed the sliver of skin peeled up on my thumb and the streak of glistening pink underneath. I couldn’t feel it yet.
I went and got a hammer from D’s toolbox and hammered on the top edge of the window until it gradually began to sink down and my heart began to lift. Finally, I could see the little bird’s head pop up above the window, and then, afraid of squashing him, I gently lifted him out with my hand. His body was so light and soft, and as his tiny claws gripped my finger, I thought, “Why couldn’t you have gripped the stick like that?” I set him down outside the window on the grill, but then moved him to the ground in case he might fall. From my vantage point on the chair, I had seen the birds’ nest inside my dollhouse’s unfinished turret, but I couldn’t put him back there, trapped inside the workshop away from his parents, who had been slipping in a crack around the side of the air conditioner.
He promptly started his chirping again, but I knew his parents wouldn’t return with me nearby. I went in the house, bandaged my finger, then looked up what to do with a baby bird and found, to my relief, that the thing about mother birds not coming back to babies that have been touched my humans is only a myth. And that fledglings like this bird (with feathers) can be left on the ground.
After that, I didn’t check on him again. I didn’t want to know it if he had died, and if he was gone, I wouldn’t know if he had been guided away by his parents or if he had fallen victim to a predator.
So I will just assume he lived his bird life happily ever after. For the little boy who won’t be ours, I hope the same.
Yes, it’s a myth about mother birds not helping their baby birds due to human touch. I’ve saved several baby birds by putting them back in their nest — and like you, at the risk of life and limb!
Hope you have good luck soon with your adoption search. You will make a wonderful mom.