Little baby bird.
Little dead baby bird.
Little dead baby bird
lying on the pavement.
It looked like a
squidgy little jelly baby, or a newborn kangaroo crawling through the
thicket of its mother's fur seeking out the comfort of the pouch and
its wee nip-nips. It's a little spot around the corner from here,
where cute miniature songbirds dance and lark in the bushes, hop
along the paving stones a few steps ahead of me as I walk to and from
the bus stop. I almost stepped on the stray immobile dot, the
featherless vaguely bird-shaped squelch, laid out on the ground, but
with perfect timing my eyes focused on it and my foot darted to the
side.
It looked too young to
have being attempting flight, and there was no sign of a smashed egg
that it might have dropped out of. How it got there is a mystery.
Where it went is also a mystery. When I walked past the same spot
later that day I had my eyes wide open, combing the ground back and
forth in search of the dead baby bird. It wasn't there. There is a
very old episode of The Simpsons, I can't remember which one it is,
but I have the image in my head of the dog licking up a big black
liquorice-looking beetle. The 'camera' angle is low down, looking up
high, so the dog's nose and tongue is gigantic, filling the screen.
This is how I imagine the eventual resting place of the poor wee baby
bird. Who knows. It probably ended up on the bottom of the
postman's boot.
Poor wee thing. What
it could have made for itself had the nameless tragedy of its
premature death not occurred. A moments silence please for quiet
reflection.
Thank you. Your
presence here is appreciated.
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