The Dirt Field

On my way to work today, I was inching through traffic on a two-lane highway exit ramp when I saw a tailless squirrel scampering in the grass alongside my spot in the left lane. The squirrel kept darting closer and closer to the road, and I was worried that he would bolt under my car at any moment, or cross safely in front of me only to be hit by a car in the right lane. I stopped as much as I could (which the person behind me enjoyed a lot), but finally had to roll down my window to yell, “Go! Go away! Get back from the road!” Because I like shouting at rodents from my car.

Being a squirrel and all, he didn’t take my advice and got as far as scurrying along the asphalt two feet away. I looked around for something in my car to throw in hopes of scaring him off and was just getting ready to launch a penny when he ran into the taller grass and disappeared.

Later in the morning, I stepped outside of my high-rise office building to call Bobby. We had only been talking for a minute when I noticed a tiny, emerald green hummingbird lying on the ground next to a tall concrete planter. A moment later, I also saw another identical hummingbird crouched on a low branch in the planter, bobbing his little head up and down. Worried that he was ill, I reached out to see if he’d let me touch him (since clearly distressed animals enjoy being poked). He let me rub his belly. Bobby was in disbelief on the other end of the line, and insisted that I hang up and take a picture to send to him.

In the moment it took to hang up the phone and look down to cue up the camera, I heard a thud and saw that the bird had left the planter and disappeared. No idea what caused the thud; there was no sign of him lying on the ground, so clearly if he collided with the nearby window, it was not serious enough to injure him in any lasting way. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case for his friend on the ground.

I picked up the small, motionless bird (while getting Bobby back on the phone) and made the determination that he was indeed dead: not moving, limp, eyes open, feet curled, tiny tongue poking out of the tip of his slender beak. He had to have died recently, however, since he was still soft, floppy, and bug-free. Based on the way his head was moving so freely, my guess is that he flew into the window and broke his neck. Finding such a beautiful little bird dead was sad enough, but I was even more crushed to think about his friend sitting near him and looking miserable.

At that point, I was standing immediately outside the door of my office building holding a dead bird, so I climbed into the adjacent garden and used a stick to dig a burial spot. Yes, I was still on my phone, wearing a blazer and heels, digging in the office landscaping with a stick while people smoked and chatted on their phones nearby. What was I supposed to do, drop the bird back onto the ground and go back inside? Hardly.

Bobby was concerned that if the bird’s friend came back to, like, mourn or something, it would be upset that the deceased companion was missing. My concern was that the bird I was holding was not completely dead, but I had no way to make sure. It’s not like I was going to press the dead animal to my ear to listen for a heart beat or try to see if it was breathing through its needle beak. I went with assuming that a floppy head and glazed eyes meant a lack of life and buried the little guy accordingly.

*Yes, my hands are calloused from being a biker. What did you expect? Anyway, you should be looking at the poor deceased bird, not my crusty paw.

Afterwards, I climbed out of the garden (receiving strange looks in the process), rode the elevator back up to my office, washed my hands, and went back to my cubicle. I expect that soon, however, a deer will wander by my desk with a broken leg, or that I’ll go to my car at the end of the day to find a thirsty rabbit huddling under my exhaust pipe. When it rains small, needy animals, evidently it pours.