When lunch rolled around, I treated myself to a gigantic bowl of popcorn because if the day was already shot, why not also make it a nutritional disaster? I returned to the couch and flipped through the channels until I came upon a nature show about cheetahs. I have always had a soft spot for the big cats, so I settled in with interest. Had I known I would never really get over what I was about to witness, I would surely have switched the station.
To my horror, I not only learned but was shown that lions will eat any cheetah cubs they come across, while the mother cheetah can do little about it due to her relatively tiny jaws. Why I didn't switch channels then and there, I don't know, but the worst was yet to come. The programme followed the lives of two cheetah cubs who managed to stay clear of marauding lions and live through to adolescence, documenting their successes and failures in hunting. Turns out they had far fewer successes than they needed to survive and both the cubs ended up starving to death. And there I was, a mouth full of un-chewed popcorn, bawling like a baby, tears dripping onto my coffee-stained pyjamas while on my TV, backdropped by spectacular sunset, two cheetahs crawled, then lay down, then died of starvation. I turned off the TV, spit the popcorn into the trash, sat back down on my couch and cried for a half hour. And I kept thinking, "How could someone just sit back and film that without doing something to help?"
Of course, I knew that feeding the cheetahs would only have delayed the inevitable and would also have made them even less effective as hunters, since they might have looked solely to human intervention for food. And I also realized that the people who filmed this tragedy could not possibly have been unmoved and were very likely bawling like babies themselves. As terrible as it was to watch on TV, the deaths of these cheetahs must have been absolutely devastating to watch in person, knowing there was nothing you could do to stop it, especially when you consider that the filmmakers had been documenting the lives of these cats since they were newborn cubs.
When a friend at work asked me how my weekend had gone, I found myself trying to tell her about the cheetahs, but ended up apologizing and changing the subject in order not to humiliate myself by breaking into sobs.
As a kid, I remember bringing home birds with broken wings and watching helplessly as they faded away over a few days and eventually died. When I grew older and looked back, I was certain that the birds had died not because their wings were broken, but because they were trapped in a shoe box, or a cage, or some other type of jail; captivity was only a step away from death anyway. But knowing that didn't diminish how sorry I felt that I couldn't help the birds and I always thought if I had loved them more or wanted harder for them to live, then they would have. At some level, I felt guilty.
A few days ago, as Sonja and Haven and I were walking Jett in the park, I noticed that Sonja was intent on something that was moving through the shaggy grass. I had Haven in the Baby Bjorn carrier and Jett on the leash, so I hurried as quick as I could behind Sonja to see what she was stalking. It turned out to be a baby robin; it wasn't brand new, but it didn't look old enough to be a fledgling. The grass was thick and barely taller than the height of my foot, but the bird was having a hell of a time trying to get away from us. The robin used its flapping wings to try to pull itself across the grass, its feet straining and pushing. All the while, the mother and father robins were dive-bombing us and shrieking at us. It was then that I realized that having a dog with us wasn't helping matters.
I quickly pulled Sonja away, telling her that the bird was scared of us and we should leave it alone. She asked all kinds of questions, but I just insisted we leave. And then I looked back and felt the guilt of leaving a poor baby bird to a fairly certain death. I spotted one of the parent birds on a power line with a fat worm in its mouth and it broke my heart; I pictured the robin returning to the nest to find the baby had fallen to the grass below. I looked up at the tree and knew that there was no way I could ever help return the robin to the nest and even if I could I would likely get my eyes pecked out by the mother and father birds.
We walked toward home, but I kept looking back and at one point I stopped and watched as the mother and father robins worked tirelessly to try and keep a crow away from the baby bird. At that moment, I was reminded of watching the cheetah documentary; why was I watching this when I knew the outcome would be awful? Amazingly, the crow was bothered enough that it took off and the robins chased it across the park. I took that as a cue to leave, but lingered long enough to see a tiny moving speck, the baby robin in the grass in the distance.
Once we were home, I was swept along by our regular routine of supper, bath time and bedtime, but all the while I was aware of the sounds of shrieking robins outside the house. I couldn't stop thinking about the baby bird in the grass.
After the girls were asleep, I put on my jacket and walked down the block to see if the bird was still there. I huge part of me was begging to turn around and go home; in my mind I could picture a pile of bloody feathers beneath the tree. But there was nothing. No bloody feathers, no sign of a killing, nothing but grass. I was relieved but confused: what had happened? Perhaps the crow had flown off with the baby robin and killed it elsewhere. Perhaps the robin had crawled into the taller grass or the bushes and was still there. Perhaps the mother and father birds were still trying to feed the baby, or maybe they had given up. I'll never know.
It's been a few days, but I still think about the baby robin and wish I could have done something to help. But like the cheetahs, I may just have delayed the inevitable, or done even more damage and then I would have had an altogether different type of guilt to deal with.
Regardless, every time I walk past the spot where we saw the baby robin, it reminds me that as important as we all seem while we're kicking and screaming in this life, once we're gone, the edges just close in and fill up the space we left behind; I believe the common phrase is "Life goes on." I know I'm simplifying, but sometimes I find I stagger under the sheer weight of it when I have a moment of clarity and recognize that this life is a gift I'm too busy living to appreciate.
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