One time me and my friend were biking back from the pool. It was that kind of spring/summer day that’s more beautiful than either spring or summer. We were a block from my house and I stopped.
“Wait.” There was a little baby bird lying on someone’s lawn. It was wet and looked like it was drowning there on the grass. We didn’t touch it because in elementary school we all learned that if you touch baby birds their moms won’t go near them ever again. They can smell the human on them. I doubt that now because I don’t believe birds can smell, but I’d still never touch one.
So we decided to call an animal shelter. I told my friend to stay there with the bird. I ran to my house and got a shoebox with a towel in it and the phonebook. When I got back she was crouched on the sidewalk looking at it. I dropped the phonebook down on the grass and crouched next to her. While I was paging through it to find a shelter she said “look!” and there was another baby bird on the grass two more feet away. Then there was another one farther on the right and another one next to the curb. It was like an Easter egg hunt with little blind chicks for the eggs, another one and another one and another one.
And then I looked at her and said “oh my god what if I squished a bird with this phonebook.” And I was kidding and we said ‘ohhh my god that would be horrible” and kind of laughed. And we kept looking in the phonebook.
When I picked up the book a couple of minutes later my friend put her hand to her mouth.
“what? what??”
Each blade of grass was bent down in the perfect rectangle shape of the phonebook and the little bird was there in the middle.
I said it must’ve been dead before I put the book down or else I would’ve seen it move. How much does a phonebook weigh, three pounds? It couldn’t have killed it. Why would that even happen?
When I thought about it later I wondered if I had seen it. Because why would I have thought of that if I didn’t already know? But I really didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t even under there until I had that thought, like God was watching and said “you’re right, that would be ironic” and then poof it appeared under the phonebook.
Me and my dad took the others to a wild animal orphanage 40 minutes away and I have to assume they survived. 4 out of 5 isn’t that bad for birds that fall from the nest. But it’s always the one you lose that seems to matter most, isn’t it?