All Too Short Lives

This spring, my son noticed a bird's nest in our garage. We assumed that since the 'hayloft' door on the second floor is warped, that the birds flew in that way. We were wrong. They actually walked into the garage, passing under a gap where the 'human (as opposed to the car entrance)' door is too short for its frame.

I stopped putting my car in the garage but my son opened the car entrance doors to fetch the Weber kettle. The lone chick from the nest flew haphazardly over his head. We decided to close the doors and to cook inside, so as not to disturb the parents.

The parents generally made a racket coming in, perching on the deck rail, calling, then flying down to the crack beneath the door. I did not hear them for almost 24 hours. When we finally went into check on the chick, we found the little corpse on the floor.

It saddened me but the nest was in a place that was both good and bad.

In the fall, a feral kitten that had been hunting in our yard was killed during a rainstorm out on the street. While it made me glad that my own cats are indoor cats, I had enjoyed watching it hunt and was going to put straw in the lean-to next to the garage to help shelter it.

Animals bring out the maternal in me. Their deaths have always been difficult for me to deal with.