Taking out the trash tonight was unusually eventful, for a chore.
First, as I dragged the recycling receptacle down the driveway, a neighbor woman approached me holding a clipboard. She lives three doors down with her extended family, a townie stalwart who has been around since blue-collar Catholics dominated the neighborhood of densely-packed two-family homes. I frequently see her walking her small terrier, a Toto lookalike that barks at me as if I were Miss Gulch herself.
She approached me warily, which was strange because we’ve had several conversations — based solely on her dog’s inordinate aggression towards me, but friendly enough words that she shouldn’t be holding the clipboard at neck level, as if fearful I will gash her throat. “We’re having a block party on June 19,” she said.
“Oh,” I said with an injection of mild delight. I thought she was going to ask me if we wanted to attend, and perhaps commit me to chips and dip, but instead she asked, “Would you mind signing this petition saying that you won’t protest the block party?”
I signed, of course, as she made small talk about how she’s gotten “everyone’s” signature except for the elderly shut-ins next door because they don’t answer the door for anyone but their son. I handed back the clipboard and continued dragging bins out the curb, nearly gagging on the unmistakable stench of week-old oyster shells from the trash. The last block party I went to was in Cambridge; the town gave our street $200 to fund the refreshments, which included a keg of PBR, grain alcohol jello shots, and (after 9pm) a very busy bong. I had no such expectations of this block, where white wine would symbolically mingle with Bud Lite.
After I took out the trash, I wandered into the garden, where the lettuce is filling in the rows nicely — almost too nicely. I pruned about 20 leaves of lettuce — the first harvest of the year, that always-exciting moment when all of the blood, sweat, and tears of cultivation pays off in the form of, well, lettuce.
That’s when the bizarre thing happened. As I headed to the back door, clutching my 20 leaves of lettuce, I happened upon a bird on the window sill of the back porch, lying on its belly, slightly askew. The bird convulsed, a slow shudder that seemed to convey suffering. I was barely one foot away from it, yet the bird barely reacted to my presence. Somehow, this dying bird found its way to the interior window sill of our partially-enclosed back porch to endure its final moments.
Empathy exploded within me. Yesterday’s walk through a veritable bird menagerie awakened a protective respect for birds, and now here is one, enduring death throes right outside my door. It reminded me of the squirrel incident a few years back, when we tried to help a lame squirrel by moving it off the pavement and into the grass where — oh fuck — it promptly died.
But when a creature is helpless, mortally wounded, and in pain, is the most merciful action to hasten its death? Mr. P wasn’t home, and neither was my downstairs neighbor. I was thinking that since she has 3 cats, we could make use of a feline executioner (“Yum. Birdz. Me wantz it.”)
I couldn’t deal with looking at the bird any longer, so I went upstairs, took care of some correspondence, had roughly half of the lettuce along with my dinner, and pounced on Mr. P the minute he came home. “Did you see the bird?”
He went down to the porch to take a look, and came back shrugging.
“It’s not there,” he told me.
“What? What do you mean? That bird was dying. It was, like, convulsing.”
“It’s not there,” he said again. “Sometimes they just need to take a rest.”
“On the window sill of our back porch?” I asked. I was perplexed that the peremptorily-mourned bird evidently lived, but hey. Good for it. I hope the bird is snuggling up with its loved ones in its nest. I hope the bird greets tomorrow’s dawn with song. Hope may be a delusive emotion, but at least it’s congenial.
