Little Brown Redemption

About a week ago I was driving along at a good clip on Rt. 22 between Lancaster and Washington Court House; the usual trip to visit my son. The sky was blue, the temperature gorgeous, the two dogs loving the ride . . . Car Talk was on NPR. It was great.

Ahead, a few birds gathered in the right lane, hovering over an unfortunate mammal. There was no time to swerve, and I'm not a swerver anyway. Not in a Chevy Venture Van. One small bird valiantly beat his wings to gain altitude, but his little body smacked into the front of my car faster than you can say "Click and Clack." If there's a word between "mortified" and "crestfallen" -- that's how I felt.

Yesterday was my chance for redemption.

My home is a two-story, 100-year-old house with a few really tall, towering trees right outside the windows. I thought, perhaps, a nest was nearby when at about 9 a.m. I went upstairs and heard loud cheeping coming from the direction of the bathroom. Keep in mind the upstairs bedroom a/c was on, all bedroom doors were closed, and a long narrow hallway leads to the bathroom.

With Gracie, my parrot, in hand, we approached the noise to investigate. As soon as we reached the bathroom . . . nothing. I looked at the floor, the sink, the top of the cabinet, the top of the counter in front of the window. Nothing. I opened the wooden shutters and looked at the tree outside the window. Nothing.

About noon, the above scenario repeated itself. "That is one loud birdie," I thought.

In the afternoon, Tyler (my Pekingese) and I went to the vet to discover that what he truly needed was 25 mg of Benadryl, which I had suspected all along. Not knowing the proper dose as I haven't had time to obtain my veterinary license, I hesitated to guesstimate. Anyway, he needed his nails done, a look-see by the vet and we got to meet a nice bulldog who had been rescued the day earlier. This poor dog, Darth Vadar, had claws so long that one had grown into its foot. Tyler was counting his blessings.



Anyway, upon returning home I went upstairs to freshen up and there it was again. I sneaked every so carefully to the bathroom and there on the bath mat was a little baby sparrow! All brown and downy and covered still with some nest-gunk. Oh boy!

How did that happen? The window has been closed for five days. Prior to that, it was opened with a screen in place. There is no access to the attic from the bathroom. There are no other rooms/doors near the bathroom and the bird cannot fly nor walk. There are no nests outside the window and there have been no big gusts of wind lately. There have been no eggs lying on my bathroom floor, ready to hatch.

Fast forward: I put him in a little cage . . . read up on the Internet (don't ask about the photo of people eating sparrows, whole, in some foreign country...I am providing NO link to that!). . . called Wild Birds Unlimited in Columbus, and was referred to the Ohio Wildlife Center . . . fed him fine canned dog food (birdie baby food does not have enough protein, I learned) with a syringe . . . tried not to bond with him . . . and made plans to take him to Dublin in the morning. I fed him about six times and he seemed to be doing well. Having had baby parakeets and a baby Goffin's cockatoo, I knew how to syringe feed a baby bird.

Alas, this morning when I approached the cage, no little cheep to greet me. The sweet creature was dead . . . his little feet pointing heavenward.

How can this be? I'd done the best I could. I'd tried really hard and he'd been doing so well the night before. He was my chance to make up for every little animal I'd never been able to save . . . the squirrel I ran over when my kids were little. I was too tired and harried to turn around and see if I could help him, and my son has never forgotten my behavior that day. The little bird on the side of our house a month ago who fell out of a nest and was near where the neighbor's cat hangs out. I tried to catch him to put him in a safer place, but he ran under the house, probably right into the cat's mouth. The children listed online who need homes! The dogs and cats and birds and small furry things at Petfinder! The old people! The Hospice Patients! Somehow, by keeping one little bird alive and transporting it to specialists at the Wildlife Rescue Center, I was going to prove that I had tuned into my inner Pocohontas and cast off the difference between other species and me. I would be the sparrow whisperer! It's all about me, isn't it?

Well, no, of course it's not. There's a bigger picture here and I have trouble seeing it. Birds live, but some don't. People live, but some don't. Everything dies and as an artist and editor, I don't have much power to save a life.

I want to though. I want to save those girls being raped in Sudan, the people in Rwanda, the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi orphans, the Afghanistan teenage girls, the people exported as slaves. How can I do anything when I can't even save a little sparrow? It seems like a tall order, and yet once again I find myself getting in the way of the bigger picture.

Perhaps the really impressive thing about people who do save lives, the Mother Theresas of the world, is not that they do it, but that they have figured out how to get themselves out of the way. Celia Taylor reports: "Mother Theresa once said, "We can do no great things; just small things with great love."

Perhaps that's the lesson for me here... But the mystery remains... How did that sparrow end up on my bath mat?