I once worked in an
office that featured the
angriest, most
embittered secretary in the
world. A
friendly "
Good morning" was usually either
ignored or answered with some sort of rude comment. (She kept her
job because she was married to the
boss, and most of us tried to
excuse her
behavior because she was
wracked with the worst case of
arthritis we'd ever seen -- we figured her
attitude was significantly
worsened by her
condition.)
One of the few times I saw her express
concern and
caring was, one day right after
work, when she found a
dying baby sparrow lying on the ground outside the office. She called me over as I was heading to my
car and pointed out the bird to me. It was
small, but nicely
feathered and had
open eyes. It didn't make a
sound, and it didn't
move much -- it moved its
head and
eyes, so we could tell it was
alive.
Our
secretary wondered what was
wrong with it, where its
mother was, what we should do for it. No
biologist, I -- but I reckoned it had
fallen or been pushed from its
nest and had broken at least one
bone in the
fall, that its
mother had given it up, that there was
nothing we could do for it. It was
dying. It was
doomed.
"Could you pick it up?" she asked me. My
momma had raised me on
stories of all the
parasites birds had, but I figured picking up one
baby bird wouldn't
kill me, so I carefully
scooped it out of the
grass. "
Light as a feather" is such a
cliche, but I could think of no other way to
describe it -- light, so
light, like there was
nothing in my hands at all. I knew it must surely be in
agony and
terrified that one of the
Big Pink Things was touching it ("You wouldn't believe all the
parasites and
germs those
Big Pink Things have," its
momma had surely told it once), but its eyes looked perfectly
calm, watching me as if all the
fear had been bled out of its
system.
"Please let me
hold it," our secretary asked, and she held out both of her arthritis-
gnarled hands. I put the bird in her hands, and she
watched it for a minute, saying, "Oh, the
poor thing," once or twice. Then she gave it back to me and asked again, "What should we do with it?" I considered trying to put it out of its
misery, but I wasn't prepared to try to
kill it with my hands. I ended up putting it back down on the ground. It was
dead the next morning and covered with
ants.
Our secretary continued to act
rudely to everyone. She and I never spoke about the
bird again.