Sometimes it’s good to have been raised in the country because after years of working with animals, crops and machinery, you get to know a lot of practical information. You have a knowledge about things like weather, livestock, tractors and grease guns which serves you later in unexpected ways in your contacts with city slickers.
Country folk can often be seen taking over in emergency situations where their city cousins might panic and run. Especially when dealing with mechanical things and the natural world.
I had reason to be grateful for my rural background recently when, in the downtown of my city one sunny afternoon, I spied a little baby bird on a busy sidewalk, squawking as it looked up into the concerned face of an elderly woman who was staring down at the bird sympathetically, but helplessly.
Before I could make it over to the scene, a young woman not out of her teens also stopped by the infant bird and stared at it with pity. Neither woman obviously had any idea what to do for the helpless creature at their feet.
I hustled over to join the drama and looking up, spotted a bird’s nest high above on the window sill of an old hotel. I knelt on one knee, comforted the panicking little bird and, then explained to the women what had happened.
I pointed up to the window sill, and as they peered up too, I told them calmly how the mother bird, which by now was pacing back and forth and looking down at us, had just kicked her baby out of the nest in a bid to teach it to fly. The little bird, unfortunately, had failed the test, and now, quite possibly, was doomed to suffer the fate of most weak things in nature.
“Isn’t there something we could do?” asked the younger woman. “Shouldn’t we call somebody?” she asked, fear in her voice.
I tried to reassure her. Sometimes, these things are best left to fate and nature.
By now, a busy lunch-time crowd was gathering to watch the scene. A little, helpless bird, looking up pleadingly into the face of a former farm boy kneeling before it. I could sense the time for action had arrived.
“There is one thing I can do,” I said, and I tipped my vinyl cheque book down in front of the bird until one edge touched the sidewalk and formed a ramp for my little friend to climb. It wobbled up the ramp and stopped.
“Maybe he just needs another shot at it,” I said to the crowd, which stood in awe as city slickers do when a country kid takes over.
With that, I flung the cheque book sharply into the air and launched the little bird back on its flight path. But, with dismay I watched as it failed to flap its little wings and its flight path led straight back down to the sidewalk.
There was a gasp from the crowd as the bird landed, not on its feet, but directly on its little, grey, fuzzy head. The landing had the effect of knocking the bird out cold. It also put a dent in the esteem for me that had been building in the crowd on the street.
Silence hung over the onlookers, as the bird now lay, seemingly dead, on the pavement.
“It’s just stunned,” I said, but my words went unheard. The crowd instead had already taken to listening to a young man and his female companion who had just emerged from the hotel and who didn’t look like they’d ever even stopped their car in the country, let alone lived there.
Instructing his friend to stay with the bird, he went back into the hotel to call the Humane Society.
In five minutes, an animal-control officer emerged from a van that had screeched up. He grabbed the bird, which was, coming around by this time, and said he’d take it to the animal shelter where they’d feed it and eventually release it.
As he spoke, I listened from the back of the crowd to where I had somehow been repositioned.
And I remarked to myself how city slickers are such know-it-alls.
©1991 Jim Hagarty
