Birds

My Titmouse

About a month before traveling to Kansas to visit friends and relatives I decided, against my better judgement, to begin a dietary regime that included drinking rather large amounts of bone broth almost every day. I hate bone broth. To me it tastes pretty much like rotten meat. However, dutifully, to follow a digestive regimen I’ve been engaging for a few months, I sought out a local supplier, so that it would at least be fresh and not frozen and with whom I could recycle containers. I drove across the river on pickup day and everything seemed to be going well. It gave me a chance to see how Red Hook, NY had changed over the course of the pandemic, since I hadn’t set foot or tire there since early March 2020. As I was walking back to my car after the pick-up, I noticed a most disturbing thing embedded in my car’s radiator grill. It was a tufted titmouse. Somehow, during my journey, it had flown into my car and the impact had twisted and smashed it into the grill. I had no real idea where I’d hit him (it was a him) as I’d seen no birds on the road, but as his body was limp and fresh, this horrible thing had only just occurred. Tufted titmice are one of my favorite neighborhood birds—tiny, sweet, cheerful grey people who are very active and lively in the backyard. They sit on the back porch and peer in the house while pestering Cat. They are one songbird that has adapted to human incursion and their population has increased over the years. Apparently, they have been observed being curious about humans and their young often stay with the parents for over a year. I love them. Heartsick, I got a napkin out of the car and gently pried him out of the grill, wrapped him up and put him in the car for the ride home. Later, after taking a picture of him I put him in the medicine wheel, gave him a tobacco offering, said a prayer and left him to the elements. He was gone the next day. I sat on this sad story for a long time because I didn’t know what to make of it other than it was obviously not a good omen about my pursuing bone broth—something that I don’t like anyway. For some reason I thought of him again today—as America revisits the fall of Saigon in Kabul, as wildfires rage not only in the western U.S., but across wide swaths of Siberia, as Haiti braces for a Tropical Storm after being hit by another massive earthquake. We think we’re planning things, that we know what we’re doing, but there’s always the extra thing our calculations don’t factor in. Then, there are things we’ve done so many times that we KNOW what’s going to happen, or at least what will probably happen and we do those things anyway. While I don’t specifically blame myself for hitting the titmouse, it was my car that killed him, unknowingly, unforeseen perhaps—yet I was running an errand that I really didn’t want to do, performing a task that was optional, against my own better judgement and preferences. What is playing out in Kabul right now is EXACTLY what opponents of our military involvement there warned us about 20 years ago—but Bush II was so insistent that going there would somehow “solve” America’s 9/11 trauma that rational argument was swept aside, (and we were going after bin Laden).

In addition, there are many, many other ways we could have helped the women and children in Afghanistan. They weren’t the actual reason we went in—they were the media talking points. If they had been more than that, we would be doing more than we are. America knew better even then—but apparently, that didn’t matter. Apocalyptic nature was also predicted—decades ago. We knew. We know. If we try to tell each other and ourselves differently, we are simply liars. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that birds come to me with messages. First, it was the post sitting red tailed hawks on K10 that, during my drives to Lawrence, brought me news of the coming day. Not long after we’d invaded Iraq (for the 2nd time in 20 years), there was a news story about how many species of birds in Baghdad were gathering in a city park and acting in ways that were very odd to the inhabitants. Prey and predator sat next to each other in the park while flocks of starlings, sparrows and other species mixed and flew together (which is very unusual). “It’s like they know something,” one woman said in translation when interviewed by a reporter about it. Of course, they know something; they have been watching us for our whole history. A few years ago, a huge rafter of turkeys invaded the yard and literally stopped a truly vicious argument between me and another person that was threatening to spiral out of control. We’ve never fought like that since (in fact, I haven’t fought with anyone like that again). Most recently, during my Kansas birthday retreat, a male cardinal came to me three days in a row providing information about relationships that I’m still unpacking. I can only wonder what the birds in Kabul are doing right now. Therefore, I will take the titmouse and his sacrifice seriously. Pay attention to what really matters. Don’t force yourself to adhere to the plans of others when they violate your own sense of goodness. But, mostly, know your power. Know that what you decide can affect others profoundly. Every decision we make right now, no matter how little or large it might seem, how obvious or inconsequential, may make or break someone else. While this may have always been true—it’s now that we can see it full on. We are, (at least I am—but I don’t think I’m alone in this), living on/within a completely liminal threshold where the nexus between action and meaning is clearly visible to ANYONE willing to look beyond their own self-interests. Again, maybe it has always been like this—but we were trained not to see. To each his/her own of course, as if we really live that way, but to paraphrase an old biblical saying, “As for me and my house, we will pay attention to what the birds tell us.”