A SMALL TRAGEDY
I live in a typical suburban neighborhood on a quiet cul-de-sac. We have a relatively small fenced-in backyard that harbors a variety of different birds: sparrows, finches, cardinals, robins, mourning doves, black-capped chickadees, goldfinches, snow birds, mockingbirds, catbirds and the odd assortment of migratory visitors.
Over the years I have learned a lot about the birds in my backyard: the ones that like to flock together, the loners and the players, the predators and the solid citizens. One thing they all have in common is a fierce devotion to protecting their young.
The smallest bird is fearless when it comes to standing between one of its babies and any kind of threat, be it a human who has unwittingly walked to close to a well-hidden nest or a predator like a blue jay, the T-Rex of the local avian community.
I was witness to an example of this the other day when I heard a commotion in my backyard. My dog, a Parsons Russell terrier, was being attacked by a pair of cardinals. It took a second for me to process the fact that they were probably guarding a baby that was trapped on the ground.
Unfortunately for them, I was too slow and the dog was too quick. The next thing I knew she was running to the other side of the yard with an already dead baby clenched in her jaws. I’d like to say that was the first time, but it wasn’t. She is a terrier, and that is what terriers were bred to do.
Still, I felt bad for the cardinals. They hovered over the area where the baby had been taken, swooping in and out in hopes perhaps of a last minute rescue. A couple of hours later I walked by that part of the yard and saw a male cardinal perched on the fence right where the baby had been lost.
It struck me that perhaps he was still mourning the loss of his child. I looked for his mate and couldn’t spot it, which got me to wondering if their union would survive the stress of this loss.
I know what you are thinking. Animals are not capable of those kinds of emotions. Only we humans possess such feelings of loss. Only we humans understand the finality of death.
Well, I wonder about that. It seems to me that this gulf that supposedly exists between mankind and all other living species may not be as wide as we think it is. Certainly those cardinals knew malice and menace when they saw it and were prepared to resist it with everything they had no matter what the odds.
Maybe we need to believe we are special in order to buttress our belief that God cares only about us. Personally, I think we would do better to see ourselves as a little less special and all the other living things on the planet as a little more special.
August 4, 2009
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