As I See It pt 2

I have killer dogs

This week Georgie caught a bird, a grackle who was not quite a wee baby but also not grown. We called it a teenager bird, this also takes the sting out of what happens next - sort of. This is the fourth or fifth bird our dogs have caught this year, they’re remarkably good at it. Old Bird Doggers we call them, I’m not sure if that’s what that saying references? But it feels right. Are they bird dogs? I don't even know. Anyway, Georgie came up to the back deck, mouth full of this fledgling bird who was still alive. We’ve dealt with this in different ways, mostly my policy is to let nature take its course. We had two cats, Wilder and Still, when we lived at our 200 year old farm house and they incessantly caught things - bunnies, chipmunks, snakes, birds, frogs. We realized soon that trying to save the poor creature was actually a disservice. I’m feeling that’s the same way we need to approach with our dogs but Steve deeply loves animals in a way different than me, so he pried the teenage grackle from Georgie’s mouth and then he an Lily and Gracie went about saving it.

Yes another bird story, I’m in my avian era. Is it because I’m 43, is this the natural way of your 40s, birding? Or because I live in a nature habitat resplendent with birds of all sorts? Or because my kids are old enough now that I can hear, for just one minute, more than them talking over one another at me and actually tune into my surroundings? I don’t know. But I love it. “New bird unlocked!” I excitedly texted a friend recently, after using the Merlin app while waiting to pick the girls up from school. I’m at that level of birding.

We set up a sanctuary in our laundry room sink, the garage was too cold, smells too much of gas from the lawnmower. The girls found an old nest, they made is soft with leaves, lilacs, an old face cloth. They tucked in the teenage bird, put water close by and went as far as to forage for worms and smush them to bits, using an old pipette to simulate baby-bird feeding.

The teenage grackle lived through the night! Which I felt was improbable. Truly it didn’t seem in bad shape, sometimes our dogs seem to just like to carry birds around in their mouths, Olive has had them fly away after a time of doing this. So maybe it wasn’t too late for this little guy! He even ate a bit of worm and pooped an unreasonable amount.

We decided that it was best to let the bird go back into nature, maybe it was ready to make its way in the world, maybe it really could fly and even find its family? Steve spent a good amount of time searching through the known grackle hang outs in our yard, the tall narrow cedars are where they nest, but apparently none of these grackle families spoke up for the teenager, at least not in a language we understood. So we decided to cuddle the bird up in the shelter of some cedars with its nest and lilacs and cloth for coziness.

I feel like it didn’t help that we have had endless rain, honestly wtf - but I digress. However all the morning that the teen bird was free, Edie would go to check on it, sing to it, rearrange its cozy red cloth so it was sheltering but not suffocating it. And not too much longer, it was gone! “It’s momma and daddy must have come to get it!” we exclaimed, hurray!

I felt like it was likely the bird had wandered out of its nest but not ended up too far, it seemed pretty discombobulated and if it didn’t actually know how to fly, or how to get high enough up to give itself a chance of flying, how could it really make it out there in the wild, cold, rainy world? I had a nagging suspicion that if anything it was maybe just a few yards down from where we plonked it, in the long verdant grass. Edie suspected this too, though I of course never shared this worry with her, I held certain that the sweet teenage grackle had been reunited with its family and was regaling them with the story, “I was in the dogs mouth, IN its mouth!!” they all chirp in awe and excitement, collectively shivering with fright in their family nest.

Edie is wise though, she told me the next morning that she thinks the bird has ‘passed away’, her words. Perhaps, I said. We can’t know.

But then we did know. Because we decided to go peer around the makeshift bird wellness centre at the base of the cedars and were at first relieved to see, nope, no little bird clump around. This was at the start of our dog walk, I had the pups on their leashes, they were milling around us, nosing at the grass when suddenly there was that unmistakable neck jerking of a dog that has got something.

At first I did try, to pry the teenage grackle out of Olive’s mouth, but it was already wounded and bleeding — hey maybe don’t read this next part if you’re squeamish about dead things? — and I could see it was long gone. I’m grateful for that at least because the next 30 minutes would have been probably terrible for the wee thing otherwise.

I couldn’t pry it out of Olive’s mouth, which was odd because she’s usually happy to drop her prize, but I think it’s because this one was already unalived and she knew that? Side note, I don’t actually know of course because my dogs are animals with instincts I’ll never relate to, when people psychologize their dog as if they would know what it was thinking, it makes me deeply untrusting of said person. Anyway, Olive seemed unable to let go of the bird and so, we went on our walk.

Through the green space by our house, there’s a nice little grassy track, passing the pond, the woods, a creek and then by my neighbours perfectly groomed suburban lawns and gardens. All along the way I kept Olive on a short leash at my side and she just trotted merrily and slowly, the birds’ head dangling from one side of her mouth, it’s feet out the other side, a wing curled up around to her snout. Really a gruesome sight actually, but also, nature I guess right?

Edie cried a bit, “I don’t want Georgie and Olive in our family anymore”, burying her face in my legs and occasionally yelling at Olive to OPEN HER MOUTH NOW. I also should mention how tired I was that day, Edie had this bizarre dry cough that helpfully only presented between the hours of midnight and 4am and we’d had several sleepless nights propping her on pillows, massaging respiratory support oils on her chest, taking nibbles off a cough drop or spoonfuls of honey, so I was tired tired. You know the kind. So this whole experience was both the very last thing I felt I could deal with and hilarious in that way things are when you’re too tried to be upset by bleeding small birds trapped in your dogs mouth.

We walked in the pouring rain and decided to curtail the neighbourhood portion, just not really sure how I felt about my dog clearly carrying a medium sized bird in her mouth for all to see. Our neighbours are standoffish at the best of times, what would they write on our community Facebook group if they saw this! At home we tried to go through the side gate to the yard, I felt sure Olive would relax there and let the thing go, but the gate was stuck so we decided to go through the house.

And through the house was where Georgie was suddenly intrigued by the bird in Olive’s mouth, she didn’t seem to care at all beforehand. But now she grasped the wing that was visible and - pop - in a flurry of feathers, plucked off a bit of bird for herself. In the house. Good grief.

I ushered Olive outside and she finally seemed to get the memo that I was not happy about this situation. She spat out the bird on the deck, cowering away from me. Edie got Georgie outside as well and both dogs shivered and backed away from me as I took the pink plastic tongs we have for the sole purpose of disposing of dead birds, because that’s how many times we’ve had to do this in the span of a couple months, and I pitched it out over the cedars towards the pond where it could, at last, enjoy a final resting place far from my dogs.

I left the dogs out for a bit, cleaned up the feathers and such inside, put my gloves in the washing machine, tucked Edie up with snacks and Tangled, and me into my bed with a book and then fell asleep for twenty minutes which really does a world of good after all that.

What does this bird story have to do with the one that precedes it? About interpretation, perspective. Mostly it’s just a great story, a bit of humour and humanity, a way for us to relate to one another through the empty void of cyber space. I guess also it does speak to the ways we experience what’s happening to us and asks us to choose - is this how you want to remember this moment?

I can remember a lot of times in early motherhood where I was irate about small things, bubbling over in moments with furious rage because I was so so sleep deprived and lonely and bewildered at my own life. I could write a book about these moments.

Maybe because I’m so much more mature now, being 43 and all, and my kids are a bit older too and I’m generally less tired than I was for the last decade. Or maybe because we have started our lives over from the ground up on repeat for over 5 years and I only recently have decided to not do that and actually embrace this life and actively build upon it, not destroy and start over.(that post is here if you’d like to read it:)

Or maybe because I have more years of practicing being intentional and deliberate and I’ve been writing about the lens we choose to see life through for years and it’s finally sinking in a bit?

The point is, that it’s all up for interpretation, it’s all up for how we want to remember the story, how we want to share it and how we want to relate to it ourselves. A quote from A Course In Miracles I remind myself of often is, you can have a miracle or a grievance, but you can’t have both.

It’s a miracle we cohabitate with animals, even if they act in ways we won’t understand. It’s a miracle I have these kind daughters just like their dad, who want to champion for suffering creatures and help them. It’s a miracle I live somewhere that I get to witness the wildness of life sprawling out beside us. It’s a miracle I am here at all.

It’s a miracle you read this.