Are You It?

About 3 weeks ago, Jon came in after walking the dogs and said "There's a little bird underneath one of the tomato plants. He's just sitting there, looking up. It's cute." Immediately I thought, oh man, that's not cute, that's sad. A little bird, at the beginning of summer, not flying.

This was a Wednesday, the half day that I spend at home. So later in the morning, when I went to close the curtains against the sun, I noticed a bird hopping across the yard and chirping. I thought maybe this was the bird he was talking about, but maybe not. It had been at least a couple hours since he had seen the bird and, heck, we get lots and lots of birds in our yard.

A few hours after that I headed out to the car with Walker, ready to make our departure. I buckled him in and threw my bag in the car. Then as I scooted in behind the steering wheel I looked up and on the sloping end of our yard there was the bird. He was just sitting there. I couldn't tell if he was injured or what exactly was going on. He was very calm. I put the car in drive and slowly rolled by the little bird. He just looked at me. He didn't squawk or try to fly or hop away , he just cocked his head and stared at the car and at me. I hesitated, but then put the car in park--my desire not to scare him outweighed by my ridiculous curiosity. I gingerly walked over to him and, as I got closer, I realized that he didn't have a right eye. He didn't look injured, he just looked like a little bird that was born without an eye. Where his eye should've been, there was a rough patch of skin, almost like a closed eyelid but not exactly. He rotated his head to look at me with his one good eye, but he didn't screech or try to get away. It was utterly disconcerting. It made me sad. It was as if he was looking at me and thinking, "Are you it? Are you the thing that's going to kill me?" I looked at him and said "I'm sorry if I'm scaring you. I'll leave you alone." and we drove away.

When I got to work, I called the Audubon Society in Huntington and asked what I should do if the bird was still around when I returned home. The woman who answered gave me the number of a local wildlife rehabilitator but also remarked sympathetically, "This is the time of year when there are just a lot of little birds around that have things wrong with them."

I called Jon at work and told him about the bird and how he was still around. I asked him to please drive carefully when he came home, because if he barreled into his usual parking spot he might run the bird over. But when he got home, the bird wasn't there. I looked for him when I got home, too, but he was nowhere to be found.

He was gone.