LITTLE BIRDIES DO WHAT THEY CAN DO
An old wood frame home like ours, built in 1906, is an echo chamber. Each movement, each settling, each creaking stair, each dropped fork, is heard throughout the structure. Like a living being, this old house keeps us aware of what’s going on both inside and just outside, through sound and vibration.
Tonight, spasmodic fluttering within the downstairs fireplace indicates we have a visitor trapped behind a cast iron shield. I freeze in place, making sure the noise is not imagined. A second flutter is all that’s required…and there it is!
“I think we have an unwilling guest in the fireplace…probably dropped down the chimney,” I tell Liz. Her brow furrows with concern and she helps me verify the shuffling.
We’ve done this before. We drift into action. Liz retrieves a small blanket, I find a soft rubber-stoppered reacher we use to retrieve wandering objects.
We brush aside first concerns—fear of a panicked bird flying into our faces, fear that in the process of capture and release we might harm the critter, fear that a freed animal just might hole up someplace obscure and never be found. Things like that.
But, as age and experience kick in, we re-enter reality and know that we simply have to face this challenge and do what we can do.
I groan as I pull back the fireplace covering inch by inch, Liz stands ready with blanket, I clutch the reacher, the theory being that if I can capture the bird long-distance I won’t risk hurting it or being pecked,
Another inch and a large totally soot-black bird zooms past us and heads for the suddenly white sky above. Unfortunately, the sky is actually the high ceiling and little birdie bounces from room to room, confused that the heavens now have plaster limits.
Finally, as we follow this displaced creature, our hearts beating as fast as little birdie’s, it comes to rest on the kitchen floor just long enough to have a tossed blanket restrict its flight.
Liz gently holds the fluttering body through the blanket, takes it to the front yard next to the bird bath, and releases it to its homeland—the great urban outdoors.
“The bird didn’t move, but maybe it just needs to rest,” Liz says. We grin at each other, concerned about the future of little birdie, relieved that we can go to bed knowing that we at least tried.
Next morning, Liz reports the bird has disappeared, so we try to imagine its birdly existence has been guaranteed.
I drive to work, and a tune plays itself in my head:
“Little birdie, why you worry like you do?
Don’t you worry, you just do what you can do.”
It’s a love song by Vince Guaraldi, about a small yellow un-blackened bird named Woodstock. When trouble arises, don’t panic, just do what you can do, he seems to say.
Bye-bye, blackened bird.
You and Liz and I survived the evening.
We three just do what we can do
© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.