it’s not about you

So a couple of nights ago, I was awakened about two a.m. by a very loud bird outside cawing over and over. It had interrupted my dream and after I woke up, I laid there for a few minutes waiting for it to stop so I could go back to sleep. Except that it didn’t stop.

I finally got up to go look out the window to see if I could see it, as it sounded like it was attached to the screen trying to caw-caw its way into my room, a la Edgar Allen Poe, it was so loud and persistent. It woke up Joshua as well, and we both went to the window, trying to see anything. After a while, we finally saw a large black bird - probably a crow or a raven - stumbling around our garden. We assumed it was injured, and since there was nothing we could really do about it at two in the morning, we went back to bed.

The cawing finally slowed and then died down. I only woke up one other time to the bird’s calls before we got up for the day. It was still there, nestled in the dirt next to my lavender plant. It looked odd, and I was afraid it had died, so I opened the window to get a better look. That’s when the bird saw me, started cawing again and took off running, dragging its right wing around behind it at a funny angle.

We called animal control at eight a.m., and their van got here in about 20 minutes. A young woman came with a towel and we all went out in the backyard so she could try to catch it. She had to chase it around back and forth a bit, and then finally threw the towel onto the bird. It stopped, and she scooped it up. I heard a “Nice catch!” from our neighbor Doug, who was watching through his window with one of his boys.

The animal control officer said it would be taken back and their vet would look at it, but that she didn’t think it looked very good. She said it was possible that a cat or a raccoon had tangled with it. Judah was very concerned that they should fix its broken wing.

Ah, breaking the hard realities of life to a four-year-old. Maybe I should read her the poem.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Blogworthy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.