Bye Bye Birdie

The Father & Son campout is an annual tradition in our ward. The guys and their boys spend the night at a nearby campsite one evening each May, and they make & eat dinner, stand around the campfire, play games, and apparently have lots of good male bonding time together. My boys look forward to it every year, and this year was no exception. There was a family get-together planned for the day after the campout in southeast Idaho, so the boys thought they wouldn't be able to attend it this year, and they were very bummed. But then plans changed at the last minute, and we realized that they would be able to go and spend the night after all, and they were ecstatic. Due to the last minute changes, Josh needed my help to get the trailer ready to go while he was at work. So the day of the campout (which was the very last day in May), the boys helped me make preparations: we went to the grocery store and got food, we took all the food and necessities to the trailer, the boys packed up what they needed overnight, and then they helped me clean out the trailer. There were a few items that needed to be fixed inside the trailer that I attended to while they swept and mopped and vacuumed it.

The trailer is parked alongside the garden area by our home. The previous day, I had been weeding the garden, and I noticed a bird fly in through the vent in the side of the trailer, and I never saw it leave. I mentioned to Josh that night what I saw, and I was worried that it was living in there now. The following day, as I was fixing and making adjustments to parts inside the trailer, I remembered what I had seen the previous day, and I looked over to the spot where the vent is. Sure enough, right above the propane cook stove, I could see pieces of hay and dried grass poking out through the vent filter, and I knew that the bird had made a nest inside the vent. This was definitely a hazard, with dry grass directly above the propane stove--pieces of the nest had already fallen on top of the stove. If the stove was lit while the nest was in the vent it would be dangerous--the vent was plugged so there would be no air flow for the propane, and with all the dry material, it could create a fire inside of the trailer. I knew the nest had to be removed.

I pulled out the filter, and began reaching up into the fan space to pull out pieces of the nest. I removed glob after blog of string and twigs and hay and straw; it felt never-ending. Seriously, I worked on clearing the vent space for over a half hour. Unfortunately, during that time, after I had reached inside and brought out a handful of the nest materials, two little eggs fell out and dropped onto the hard surface of the stove below. One of the eggs split in two and I could visibly see a baby inside of it. I felt terrible. I didn't even think about there being eggs inside of the nest, nor could I see the inside of the nest to know that they were there. The vent was above my head in a space that only one hand could barely fit at a time, and I was completely blind as to what the hand was touching above me. I knew that since I'd messed with the nest, the mama bird wouldn't return to care for the little eggs anyway, but it was sad to see such a tiny baby birdie, and know that I was the cause for its death. 

After the trailer was all done getting cleaned and fixed and ready to go, I took the sack of nest remains out to the garbage can, but pulled out the little eggs first, and set them on a table outside in the warm sun. The baby birdie lived for several hours after that, and my boys were all very curious to see it before they left for the campout: a skinny little being smaller than my finger without feathers or fur. The skin was translucent so you could see the tiny organs inside of its belly. The tiny talons on its feet were already developed and its little beak was perfect. It was so precious, and it simultaneously broke my heart and intrigued my mind to see it. I took several pictures of it--if you find me insensitive, please forgive me. It was too amazing to not document with photographs.

 

 

 

Isn't it amazing?! In the last photo, you can see blood vessels in the belly, tiny talons on its foot, eyelids forming, and the perfect little yellow beak. So adorable, and so sad. It stopped breathing that night. We laid it in a different nest, taken from the boys' collection (we have so many mature trees, and when the wind blows, sometimes nests (built and secured with mud) fall down and remain intact, and the boys have collected several) as its final resting place.

Life is a fragile thing, and I was reminded of that fact the day I cleaned out the trailer to help my boys and accidentally killed an innocent bird in the process.