Baby birds
by Elouise
Baby birds
Wrenched by snakes
From precarious nests
Flutter to the ground
Dead and dying
My first memory of daily life
On this lush planet
Teeming with death by
a thousand lashes of
whipping swords and
razor-sharp tongues
small and large –
Have mercy on us.
Lord, is it I?
The question haunts me
Silence and apathy pile on
Proliferating odds
Of global violence perpetrated
By ourselves against ourselves
Despite Your image
Carried within our fragile human
Bodies and aching souls
Have mercy on us.
It was the early 1950s. I’ll never forget the evening we heard a racket outside a window in the dining room. I was about 8 or 9 years old. A pair of cardinals had built a nest in a shrub outside and just below a dining room window. A first-class seat for the whole family, as bird eggs hatched and little peeps began their regular cries for food! More food!
On this evening, however, the racket was huge. Way more than babies screaming for food. We looked out and saw a small yard snake attacking the nest. The cardinal mom and dad were raising a ruckus, going at the snake. Too late. Babies were already falling out of the nest.
By the time Dad got there, all 3 or 4 babies were on the ground. Still very young, and unable to make their way back to the nest. Dad got a shoebox, lined it with a towel, put on his gloves, and went out to see if he could help. Just before depositing them in the nest, he let us take a look from a safe distance.
That night we went to bed hoping all would be well in the morning. It was not. The babies were gone.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 22 May 2019
Photo of baby cardinals found at intothedeep.net
Telling the Truth 
This is such a sad story, I almost can’t put a like on it. Is that really your earliest memory, Elouise? ~Natalie
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Great question, Natalie. It’s my earliest memory of death to and by a natural predator. I’d seen all kinds of animals and birds up to that point. But they weren’t in immediate distress, with the exception of one chicken I saw my Dad kill (for dinner) in the back yard when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I still hate seeing wildlife killing and eating other wildlife–no matter how many times it all gets explained as ‘natural.’ It reminds me so much of how we turn on each other as human beings, and also on this planet we call home and depend upon for our human survival.
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Perhaps Mom and Pop relocated them to somewhere else, or were the parents flapping around miserably? Just thought I might ask, in case it was a possibility. 🙂
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Hi, Fran. No, they didn’t relocate, but hung around the yard for a while. Then later, they gave it another try, this time successful. They’d been nesting in that bush for a couple of years, and had become used to seeing our faces peering at them from the window! So…a happy ending 🙂 though the event itself was awful. 😦
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Nature can be cruel, and dangerous for the young, whether it be birds, or other kinds of animals. It’s sad to see, but I guess that’s how things are.
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True, though I do wonder how our encroachments on their habitats have made things worse, especially in the last several decades. Yes, it is sad to see. 😟
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