Birdy
Dan Morelle posted a photo:
A Li’l Birdy Story
As a small child I lived in flats in south west London. To the back of our ground floor flat was a shared garden which seemed like a gigantic field. It had perfect giant trees for climbing and patches of bare ground for digging holes and making mud pies.
I clearly remember that frosty autumn morning my brother and I discovered two little baby starlings cheeping away in distress on the ground, ejected from their nest. It was exciting and a little scary. One of the neighbours had a fierce little scrappy charcoal coloured mutt that was tormenting the birdy brothers under a bush. It must have been a Sunday because our dad was there. We caught the birds and put them in a white shoebox on the highest branch he could reach of the giant Horse Chestnut tree. I tore some grass up for their food and my brother got some cotton wool for their bedding. We used some crisp wrappers for insulation and made some air holes in the lid with a pencil point.
My father gently explained the birds might not survive the cold of the night or the shock of being handled by us but we wanted to make the effort to help them through the night – if we could only get them the strength to fly they could find their nest and be okay.
The next morning my brother and I slung on our little red coats on and ran outside hoping that we’d find our birdy counterparts alive. In our hearts we knew that was not the truth. What we discovered was worse that anything a little boy could imagine.
At the base of the tree propped up against one of the erupted ground roots was the box, tissue paper shredded and strewn about. I have no idea what happened to the lid. Inside was just a few blades of grass and about 2 metres away on the bare ground were the scrawny skeletal remains of our birds, no feathers, no flesh, no blood, just bones. So thin, fragile and white. In the corner of my eye I saw the dog licking his white teeth and sneering.
