I Saw the Same Bird.
Five days before Dylan went to college, on the way home from Shane’s therapy session, I nearly ran over a bird on the road. It was sitting eight inches into oncoming traffic on a very busy street near my house.
I screamed something and pulled the car over, jumping out. I ran barefoot with a flip-flop in one hand, waving it at oncoming traffic to call attention to the bird. As I got closer, with cars and trucks roaring by, the bird sat very still. It didn’t even notice my approach.
It was a bright red cardinal with a blue head – a molting male, I think. Gorgeous but stunned, he just stared at me as I walked around it. He didn’t move at all.
I had no idea how to save him from the onslaught of cars, so I waved wildly with a flip-flop. Miraculously, he flew to the other side of the road! He didn’t fly high, but he went safely into the brush.
I got back into my car and drove away, happy to have helped.
The next day, I was at my computer when I saw a bird hopping around on the deck outside my window. It was the exact same bird.
He was easily a mile from where I’d seen him more than 24 hours before.
There’s no reason in the world for a bird to hop around on that deck. He seemed to be looking for something, so I took some bird seed outside and tossed it into the grass, but the bird didn’t seem to be looking for seeds.
About an hour later, another cardinal attacked him in our driveway. The molting cardinal didn’t seem to be able to get away, or to fight back. So I ran out – again – and saved him from the attacker.
Half an hour later, the red-and-blue cardinal was still sitting quietly in my yard.
So I went outside. Bill and I caught him in a box. He could still fly, but not into a tree. I figured my house was safer at night, and we could take him to the wildlife rehabilitation center in the morning.
I put a little water dish and some bird seed into our dog crate, and put a towel inside for a bit of privacy. It was very quiet in the house. The bird sat still for a minute or two, and then he promptly went to sleep.
I thought about the mile trek that bird made, from the busy street to my house. I thought about him surviving the night, with all the predators roaming around. I wondered what caused him to be so confused, why he was sitting in the road, why he ventured to my deck.
Shane said, “Maybe God sent him to you, to show you he was all right.”
I smiled. “Maybe He did,” I said.
The bird slept peacefully in the dog crate for a couple of hours. And then, without a sound, the bird died.
Bill found him, and I couldn’t believe he had come all this way just to die. I wanted to remember him sleeping so soundly.
As Bill was cleaning out the crate and burying the bird, I said, “You have my permission to lie. You can tell me that he just flew away!”
And Bill said, “Up there!” He pointed to a hundred-foot tree. “He flew way up into that tree!”
I smiled, for a half-second, believing it.
And then I started to cry, because that was what I wished most of all for that little bird.
A few days later, I took Dylan to college and watched him fly away.