The Fledgling

By Sandy Kamen Wisniewski

The early spring morning brought with it cracks of thunder and impressive lightening streaking the sky. But with all the show there wasn’t much rain and by the afternoon all was quiet and the sun was peeking out through the clouds. My almost three-year-old grandson Danny and I decided to trek over to the park, Danny on his five-dollar garage sale tricycle (I love great buys) and me on foot.

Our visit to the park was pleasant, yet uneventful. On the way back Danny peddled away and my cell phone rang. It was one of my friends checking in to say hello. As I listened to her chatter away I noticed just to the right of us, on the patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk, a small, brown-ash colored bird appear from what must have been behind us. I was momentarily perplexed by where the bird came from but the question quickly dissipated as I watched. The bird sat there all puffed out, unlike an adult bird, which would have quickly flown away. Downy feathers mixed with grown up feathers¬ - a fledgling! I said to myself.

Hop, hop, hop, went the bird, looking around in delight. I half listened to my friend talking, fully wishing at that very moment there was no such thing as cell phones because I was missing out on sharing such a special experience with Danny. But, I thought to myself, even if I hung up quickly it would likely be too late and the bird would fly off before I could even get Danny to focus on it at all. So I watched the little bird and half-listened to my caller.

Oh how that bird was bursting with wonderment as she looked all around her. She seemed so proud of her young self, for her independence, for her ability to move about. She flew-hopped again, stopped and pivoted her head back and forth. Glorious was the new day through that tiny new bird’s eyes as she took in the breeze, the moistness after a rain, and the clean, clean air.

Hop, hop, hop into the street, her chest puffed out in pride for she was independent, free and able to decide what she wanted to do. Every part of her was twitching with excitement. Oh, to be young with new eyes! Then just as quickly as she had appeared I caught the sight of a car out of the corner of my eye. It was rolling towards her.

“NO!” I yelled trying to will the car to stop. This cannot be happening, I screamed in my head. Not slowing, braking or swerving to avoid her the driver killed the bird.

The sound of crushing bones, as the car slowly ran over her, without a pause, sounded like the scene in a horror movie when a person is creeping through woods and slowly steps on and crushes fallen twigs. The fledgling’s body was flat; the only indication of what she had once been were the feathers now strewn about like a chicken been plucked.

So odd that in one minute a little life can be literally dripping of spirit, rich with it, as if surrounded by golden light and in just a snap of the finger, nothing, simply nothing but a bunch of feathers.

I looked over at Danny, who had stopped his peddling and was looking towards the bird. “I gotta get off the phone,” I told my friend and hung up abruptly. I bent down towards Danny.

“Oh honey, the little birdie was killed by that car, that’s so sad,” I told him. “But now the bird’s in heaven.” (I really didn’t know what else to say.) I studied his face, blank, his eyes blinking. “Poor birdie,” I said, searching Danny’s face to make sure he was all right. Then I put my sunglasses on and cried, right out there in the open - not a sobbing cry but a soft, sad cry for the bird, what was and could have been and for the tragedy of it. Danny looked at me a bit perplexed but accepting, I wasn’t sure he was making the connection.

That day and even now as I write this I have been trying to think of how to turn that experience into a life’s lesson, or a positive experience or a moral or something. I’m struggling with it even as I write this. I could say that things like that happen all the time, cars kill all sorts of animals, that’s life. But I don’t see anything necessarily positive about that at all. I could say that the car killed that bird but that’s really not the case, not really. It wasn’t the car but the person driving it who was too self-absorbed doing whatever they were doing to see the bird. There weren’t any warranted distractions for the person driving on that quiet suburban street.

If we look around ourselves we won’t miss a small bird right in front of us.

So then I think to myself, I can think about the fledgling herself. She was so completely and totally in the moment. She was enjoying herself in those moments to such a degree she was quite literally light as a feather. She had pride at her independence and she was free in spirit and soul. Maybe the lesson of this story is not necessarily the demise of that tiny soul but the way in which she chose to live. I can try and do that. Yes, I will remind myself of how that little, brown fledgling lived.