With the girls finally tucked into bed last night, Hunter and I were cooling off on the deck after the heat of the day (+33 in May!). It was a calm and peaceful evening until I spotted Ginger the Cat. She was out in the long grass up to no good as usual.
She had something; something small and fast. A frog, a toad, perhaps a June bug. It was comical to watch at first - flicking it up out of the grass, batting at seemingly thin air. Then, just as quickly, she lost interest and started to walk away, but it moved again, and back she came for round two. Then I heard it or I thought I heard it and it didn't sound like an amphibian or insect, it sounded like a baby bird. I ran down the deck stairs yelling at the cat to get away so by the time I got to the spot Ginger was long gone and I had to search in the long grass to find whatever it was. There was nothing there, must have been a bug after all I thought. Whew. The mosquitoes were voracious last night so I wanted to get inside fast - I was about to walk away when I saw it. A tiny green wing streched upwards, a little black eye, a long beak tucked way down in the long grass.
"Dammit!!" I yelled. "It's one of the hummingbirds!!". I have the utmost respect for these tiny migrants and feel absolutely horrible when one loses it's life because of us. Last summer, one died after flying into our window.
Hunter was watching me the whole time from the deck above. "Is it dead? Pick it up!"
Now I've done my share of dissections as a young zoology student, I've worked at a wildlife rehab centre where birds are brought in after hitting hydro lines, at a denning site where crows have left garter snakes to die after feasting only on their livers, I've helped move a dead and stinky bear, shot and left to rot by some poacher - I've seen wildlife death and destruction, but I couldn't pick up something that may or may not be dead and bleeding. I don't know why, I guess I am afraid of seeing something in pain and causing it more pain, all I know is I couldn't pick it up.
Hunter came down and looked. It was dead.
"It's alive" he said. It wasn't blinking, it wasn't breathing, it looked dead to me.
I went in search of something to put it in. When I came back out, Hunter was sitting crossed legged in the long grass looking at this tiny little bird lying on her side in his hand, the mosquitoes buzzing all around him. Here was this "big guy", a hunter as his pseudonym suggests, someone that could take down a deer or a moose, sitting like a little boy carefully holding this delicate little bird in his big hand, mindless of the mosquitoes attacking from all sides. It was a moment I won't forget.
"I think her wings may be broken, but if we leave her out here all night the bugs will get her". She wasn't moving, I didn't think she had long to live and I didn't want her to spend her last few moments being eaten by ants and other "cleaner uppers".
"Put her out of her misery" I said.
That little bird heard and understood what I said, I am convinced of it, for no sooner were the words out of my mouth did her wings come alive with a buzz that sounded like two bees and she zipped out of my husband's hand and up into the trees as fast as I've seen a hummingbird fly!!
What a moment! We just looked on in awe. A happy ending. Who knew that hummingbirds could play dead?
Strange isn't it? I, who worked at a wildlife rehabilitation centre, so quick to put something out of its misery, yet my husband, a hunter who can take an animal's life, wanting to do what he could to save this tiny little one.
To learn more about these tiny wonders, check out these sites:
http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=71
http://www.hummingbirds.net/
The View from my Hilltop
