LIFE AND DEATH ENCOUNTER WITH A BIRD

The Boston Globe

BEVERLY BECKHAM

My husband said I should put the bird out of its misery. "It will never fly again. Why are you doing this?"

The sparrow, small and frail and biblical, got its neck stuck in the crook of a wrought-iron arm that holds a bird feeder, which I bought last week in a small store in New Hampshire. The feeder, the holder, the bag of special seed were purchased from an old New Englander who's been selling bird food and feeders his whole life. My other feeders are markdowns and seconds. But this was the real thing, "Droll Yankees The World's Best Bird Feeders," a Lexus in my world of Fords. Even the seed was a special blend.

"The bird food is magic," said my friend, Eileen, who has a house in New Hampshire. And it was. I came home and set up the feeder and saw birds I'd never seen before land on the tiny metal perches, which are guaranteed not to rust, and to be safe in the cold the birds' feet won't stick to them. I watched yellow finches, small delicate things, and chickadees, and two doves, and a blue jay that squawked as it ate, dove and hovered for the special seed.

If I had seen the sparrow get caught, I might have been able to rescue it. But I didn't see it slip into what would become its noose. I looked and there it was dangling by its neck from the shepherd's crook, a V-shaped trap, an accident waiting to happen.

I thought the bird was dead. And then I saw that it wasn't. Gently, I lifted it from its trap and laid it in a small, clear container. I stroked its wings and talked to it, blaming myself for not seeing that a bird could get caught in a thing like this. "I'm sorry," I said over and over.

That's when my husband said I should end its suffering. "It's not going to get better. Why are you doing this?"

A bird's eye is the size of a sprinkle, a dot above an "i," a tiny, tiny thing. But full of knowledge, of communications I don't understand, of song and secrets I don't know.

I stared into its blackness, but not its void. And the bird looked into my eyes. And I couldn't take its life.

For a person, I would have called 911 and an ambulance would have sped through traffic to my house. And everything that could have been done would have been done - CPR, a new airway, medicine, blood, X-rays, CAT scans, a feeding tube.

For this animal, I called the MSPCA and a man with a kind voice said I shouldn't interfere with nature that I should place the bird somewhere outside and let it go.

But it's my fault, I told him. Explaining the crook in the holder. Explaining what I thought had happened. Explaining that something else might get the sparrow the neighbor's cat, another predator if I left it alone.

"Let it go," he repeated, saying that the bird probably was old or sick, that poles for bird feeders are made in V shapes and that birds don't routinely fall into them. Let nature take its course, he said.

But what if nothing had been wrong with this bird? What if this were an accident? What if nature had made a mistake?

Online, I read that you're not supposed to give food or water to an injured bird. But how could I not feed it or try to quench its thirst? My son-in-law came over. We placed the sparrow in a shallow box, gave it water and seed, and left it on the table on the deck off the family room, and turned the outside light down low.

And in the morning when I awoke, the bird was still alive.

I believed then that it would get better. It was all bones and matted feathers, but it fluttered its wings. And it looked at me. And I thought, when the vet's office opens, I'll take it there.

But the bird died a short while later.

Maybe my husband was right. Maybe I should have ended its suffering. But how do you know when to give up and when to hang on? How do you know whether a bird, with a little bit of help, will fly away or whether God will call it home?

I dug a hole and buried the bird under a tree in my backyard. And I taped over the crook where the bird got caught. I don't know why its death made me cry. Because I saw it struggle? Because I looked into its eyes, or because it looked so deeply into mine?