Bye, bye, Birdie… June 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in younger son.Tags: bird, younger son
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Sorry posting has been so light. I’m in the middle of fighting with my program and also trying to write up a proposal. Both activities are rather time-consuming.
We went to check on baby bird last night. It was sitting in the box/nest and doing well. I was actually very surprised. I expected it to be gone and/or dead. I was therefore feeling really good about the whole thing, thinking we’d done a good deed for our sparrow friend. I was feeling more confident that it was going to make it.
Before we left the grocery store, we went to take another peak. I mentioned to the younger son that we should rearrange the grass (which was drying up) to cover up the birdie a bit more. Younger son got overly enthusiastic and scared poor birdie out of the nest.
And that’s when everything went wrong. Birdie can fly short distances, low to the ground. So it did that…and landed directly in front of a car which was stopped. Apparently the person in the car had stopped to watch us. I turned around and pondered briefly if I should go after it…and then the driver started driving at the moment…right over our birdie.
Both younger son and I must’ve had horrified looks on our faces because the driver stopped and laughingly said, “What? Did I hit it or something?” I don’t think he realized at all what it was like to watch that. I replied (probably rather angrily), “No, you ran it over.” He kind of seemed surprised and said, “I didn’t see it.”
Of course he didn’t…it was right in front of his tire.
So birdie didn’t make it. Younger son immediately said he killed it and was starting to cry. I told him it wasn’t his fault. (I’d already saved said bird from being run over twice before we got it the new nest.) That being said, I feel guilty for not running out and telling him to stop before he’d moved. Of course, realistically, I only had a second to react, and I just wasn’t fast enough. There’s plenty of guilty feelings going around here. I’m already missing going to check on our little friend, and I keep saying that at least he got a couple more days than he likely would have.
All that being said, it makes me appreciate having younger son around. Unlike the older son, he’s always taking me on ‘adventures’. A few years back, we saved a baby rabbit. He will want to stop in the middle of winter and go on a random hike through the park. He forces me to stop thinking about everything else in life and pay attention to the stuff in front of me much more than I do without him. I’m sad things didn’t turn out well on this adventure, but at least we tried, and we dealt with all of it together.
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That is sad news and I’m so sorry you and the boy were there to see it.
RIP baby bird.