That's Life

- Frank Sinatra

Life is fleeting.

Yesterday, as Al & I were preparing to go to my parents for Father’s day, I noticed a little bird frolicking on the bottom step of the pool (pool is still not filled up). At first I thought, how cute, he’s taking a little bath in our (unchlorinated) swamp. Then I saw him dive into the main pool water and noticed he was actually trapped in the water and about to drown. So, as any other animal lover would have done, I grabbed the skimming net and fished him out of there...only to realize that he is a baby! A little baby red-breasted robin fallen out of his nest at the first sprouting of his yet-undeveloped wings. At first I thought his foot was broken since one of his claws was at a weird angle, there was also a juicy moisture on both ears and he was breathing very heavily, although this seemed quite normal after his ordeal - after all, he had fallen about 20-30 feet from his nest in the neighbor’s lot onto our concrete and into our pool. I put him into a shoebox and took him over to my parents as Mamina has mended many a broken wing and is quite the expert. After letting him dry off and calm down, I realized nothing was visibly broken, and actually he was quite spritely, hopping about, chirping and opening his mouth wide open everytime we neared him in hopes of scoring some food. His baby down-covered wings were in fine working order as were his claws. At this point, we tried to think of something to feed him, none of us were too thrilled to go into the garden to dig up worms-ew! So we thought, what could have more protein than eggs. We took some leftover omelet, squished it with some water, and fed it to him with a medicine dropper. (I know it’s kind of strange to feed a bird eggs, but hey, we didn't hink he could digest milk!)

He seemed to be doing fine and I was all excited at the prospect of training him to fly (we’d actually achieved in teaching two baby blue jays to fly when the same thing happened when I was a teen.) After our father’s day brunch, we took him back home in my mom’s cat carrier (now filling in as a cage). We surely couldn’t leave him in the shoebox as he was hopping around so much I was scared he would jump out of the box and back into the pool, let alone that he could be exposed to outside predators, so the cage was safest. We placed his little cage in our back yard, and lo and behold after a little while, his parents found him. They kept swooping down and landing on this cage, checking him out. One of the parents would scan for danger while the other fetched nice big juicy worms to feed her child through the bars. When either Pacino or I went outside near the cage, they would follow us like hawks, circling our house and making sure their baby was safe. It was incredible to see the parental instinct of these birds. Needless to say, we watched this amazing family in action until the sun set. At this point, I noticed the mother was getting really antsy, she kept circling the cage on foot like a sentry guard, she was panicky, she kept peeking into the cage and hopping erratically, up, down, circle the cage, flying back and forth, she was really agitated. You could see that she was trying to get into the cage and be with her baby. After doing this for over an hour, she flew off to watch from afar. I went outside to try to leave the door of the cage slightly ajar, just enough for the mother to be able to touch her offspring, but not enough for the baby to fall out, but I noticed that she didn’t come back. Later in the evening, after the sun set, I went out to check on him and he was sleeping, so I covered the top of the cage with a towel to keep it warm overnight. I named him Ziggy.

This morning, Pacino woke up first to get ready for work, and he woke me up with the very sad news that Ziggy was no more. I went down to check him out and after picking up his little cold, stiff body to examine it, I realized what I had suspected but hoped wasn’t true. The juicy moisture around his ears was not pool water, but was blood that had crusted over....internal bleeding is what I figured. No matter how good a shape he was in outwardly, showing sings of energy and vigor, the trauma on the inside (probably a head injury) was not something that could have been easily detected. In hindsight, I think the mother realized her baby was in trouble which was why she was so agitated at the end of the previous day. I was really sad, letting go of a few tears. I just couldn’t put him in the garbage, so I dug a little hole in the flower bed near the tree he fell out of, and buried him near his home. It’s funny how throughout the night, I slept in a semi-state of consciousness, stirring once in a while and thinking, is he cold, is he scared? Maybe I had a premonition...who knows.

I learned one thing. Parental instinct and the will to survive are present in even the smallest of creatures. Their little family was so fascinating and heartening to watch. Birdbrains, my ass!

Goodbye Ziggy. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.