To Free a Starling from the Snare

There was a knock at the door.

I was lying on the sofa, putting off getting ready for Mass, because I was anxious. But I was even more anxious when I heard the knock.

It was so hard and insistent that I ran to the door, thinking it must be the police. But it was the Artful Dodger with his sister, the middle child, the one who’s tall and skinny like a sylph. Jimmy’s Boy was with them. Charlie the traumatized cat was standing behind them, casting a famished look at the small, black, yellow-billed creature in the Artful Dodger’s hand.

“We found a baby bird that don’t know how to fly yet!” said the Artful Dodger, just as the bird leaped out of his hand.

Thankfully, Charlie is a terribly inept hunter. She pounced on the air a moment after the bird disappeared into the cedar bushes.  The children clamored around, trying to get him back, explaining to me how they’d found the bird hopping across the road and saved him from a passing motorist. They kept saying he was a wren, but I think he was actually a baby starling.

“This is called a fledgling,” I lectured, after we got the starling back. “There’s nothing wrong with him. This is the time of year when fledglings are learning to fly. We need to get him into a yard with no cats and let him go. His parents are probably watching, waiting for us to leave so they can help him learn to fly a little better. Here, this is a good place! Set him down under the azaleas.”

“We’ll take care of him now!” said the Sylph.

“No, no, don’t bother him anymore. He’s scared of you. Just let him alone so his parents can find him. Go play!”

Then I really did have to get ready for Mass, so I didn’t look back to make sure they had left.

The next hour was a tense one, stimming in the back of the church where everything frightens me. I wish I could ever overcome the feeling that I’m a false Christian who doesn’t deserve to be in the Lord’s presence. I wish Sunday was a day of rest instead of a day of anxiety. But this is what Sunday is, for now.

When I got back to LaBelle, there was the Sylph again, crying, with a skinned knee.

She confessed that as soon as I was gone, they had picked up that fledgling again.

They’d named him “Lucky,” because he was lucky to escape that car. They’d tried to teach him to fly by throwing him in the air, and when that didn’t work, they’d put him in an apple basket lined with a microfiber tea towel on the Dodgers’ porch. They wanted to keep him as a pet. I shuddered as I thought of the Dodgers’ menagerie of hungry cats, but what had happened to Lucky was arguably worse. The sadistic teenage sister of the Artful Dodgers had stolen him right out of the basket. She was walking around the neighborhood with him right now. The Sylph had tried to get him back, and been cruelly pushed to the pavement.

“She is always stealing from you,” I sympathized as I cleaned the girl’s cut in my kitchen. “She stole the bag of muffins I gave you last week! Come on, let’s get the bird back. But you have to promise to really let him go this time. Then we can play in the sandbox until supper!”

The Sylph and I searched the neighborhood; the littlest female Dodger, the one I call The Mandrake, tagged along. When we finally found the eldest Dodger, she was wandering up and down the block with Lucky loosely imprisoned in one fist.

“Put the bird in my hand,” I demanded.

“Why?” asked the eldest Dodger.

“Because animal cruelty is illegal, and you don’t want it on your permanent record.”

That was the right answer. She surrendered at once. The starling slid into my left palm, unresisting, motionless from fear or from exhaustion. At first I thought he was dead, but then he shuddered a little. I covered him with my cupped right hand, almost a liturgical gesture, as if I were receiving Holy Communion.

“Thank you. Come on, girls.”

We took him to the vacant lot where the daffodils grow. I opened my hand in the tall tufted grass. “All right now. Let’s say goodbye! All creatures of our God and King, lift up our voice and let us sing, Alleluia!”

“Goodbye, Lucky!” said both girls.

“Come on! Let’s play in the sandbox!”

We were halfway back to the house before I realized that the Sylph was not following us. She was sneaking off towards her own house, with one arm clutched to her chest. When she finally got back to the garden, it took some interrogation to get her to tell me where she’d been. Lucky the starling was back in the apple basket. At my insistence, the basket was brought back to my yard, but they absolutely insisted that the bird stay in it.

“Oh for goodness sake, just hang the basket on the lilac bush for the night. Lucky will be safe there. He’ll probably hop out and go back to learning to fly! You can’t keep a wild fledgling. They need to eat constantly or they’ll starve to death. You don’t want the bird to die, do you?”

“We can feed him!”

“No!” I shouted.

Both the girls cringed as if I’d slapped them.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper. Look, I promise Lucky’s parents are watching from a distance, and they will feed him the proper food once we’re gone.”

“But they abandoned him!”

I explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, how birds teach their babies independence, and why they couldn’t keep a baby starling as a pet. And then I drew their attention to the sand castle, which wasn’t a good distraction. At one point, the Sylph tried to throw some sand in the apple basket for Lucky to play with.

Finally, I announced that it was suppertime and I had to walk them home.

The Mandrake let me hold her hand and chatted with me as I took her back to the house. The Sylph, who has far less guile than she thinks she does, kept glancing back at my yard. I knew what would happen the moment I turned my back. I watched the girls go into their house, and close the door. And then, I sprinted back to the lilac bush.

The starling let me hear his voice for the first time. He chirped in protest as I tried to lift him from the basket– I saw his feet were stuck in the fibers of the tea towel. Gently but as quickly as I could, I got them loose. I held him in my left hand, covered with my right again, close to my chest like the illustration of Saint Tarcisius refusing to give up the Host in that Lives of the Saints book I had growing up.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re not safe here, but I’m taking you to safety. Come on.”

He chirped again, but allowed himself to be carried.

I heard the Sylph coming into the backyard to get Lucky, just as I tiptoed out the front.

I thought of the vacant lot, but that was no good. It would be the first place the Sylph would look. I thought of going to Jimmy’s house, but Jimmy has dogs and an outdoor cat of his own. I slipped past his house and then around the block to the alley on the other side. Quickly as I could, quietly as I could, like a Roman martyr sneaking into the Catacombs in a hagiography, I made my way past the occupied houses to the derelict one on that block. It was very close by, close enough that Lucky’s parents might still be near. But it was beyond the usual roaming ground of the Artful Dodgers.

The yard was all thistles and ivy. There were birds of all kinds there: robins, wrens, a few starlings like Lucky. I had no way of knowing if this was where Lucky belonged, but he’d have a chance at a life and learning to fly here. There was no chance if the children got him back.

I muttered a prayer to Saint Francis as the bird hopped out of my hand.

I tiptoed back to the vacant lot to pretend I’d always been there. Sure enough, there were the Mandrake and the Sylph, searching the tall grass.

“Where’s Lucky?”

“Where none of us will find him again. I told you, birds are supposed to be free.”

“But we wanted to keep him!”

“You can’t keep a wild animal for a pet!  Remember, the Bible says ‘ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.’ God intends wild animals to be free.”

“But you keep a guinea pig!”

“Guinea pigs are tame animals. Cats are tame animals. Birds are wild, and God wants them to be free.”

The Sylph did not skip a beat. “Do you think I could tame a wild deer?”

“If you manage that, let me know. Good night, girls!”

Back in the house, I collapsed on the sofa again.

The Kingdom of Heaven is in all of this, somehow.

The Kingdom of Heaven felt close by me, just then.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.