Baby Birds

This morning I started work on a scene which is very early in a new book and a couple of characters are talking about a girl named Mary, who one of them previously left to fend for herself.


"So, talk to me, Harper," said Henry.
"About what?"
"About why you didn't help Mary when you first met her."
"I did help her. I scared off the scruffs."
"After that. Why didn't you help her after that?"
"I don't bring strays home," said Harper.
"She's not a stray. She's too nice to be a stray."
"All the girls from Unity are nice, Henry. They can't help it just like you can't help being tall," Harper snapped. "Besides, I had hoped she'd take my advice and go home."
"You could have helped her get home," Henry pointed out.
Harper sighed. "Did you ever find a baby bird as a kid?"
"Sure," Henry said with a small smile.
"You know how your parents tell you not to touch it because if you do the bird parents will smell you on the baby bird and reject it? That's half of it."
"And the other half?"
"Natural selection. Survival of the fittest."
"I don't think I agree with that."
"Which part?"
"Both parts. Firstly, the smell thing is a myth, and Mom always helped me raise orphaned birds."
"That figures," said Harper. "And survival of the fittest?"
"Well, the girl is still here isn't she? You underestimated her."
"We'd leave her for the lions if we were gazelles," Harper grumbled.
"But we aren't gazelles, we're human. Gazelles can't pick each other up when they fall."
Harper shrugged. "It doesn't really matter, I guess. We're helping her now and that's that."


 So, I've spent the last couple days thinking about Harper's motivations and worldview and what past experiences have affected her and this has all been very much in my mind. Then this afternoon Mom popped her head in the door long enough to call us girls outside. Sara stayed in the AC, but I went out to see what was wrong. A nest had fallen out of the tree in the front yard. I could hear the squawks as I approached it, and Mom called to me to ask how many there were. I knelt down and looked in the hole of nest, counting as a the baby birds scrabbled over each other. One. Two. Three. Four? No, three. No, definitely four. Four baby birds. We were quiet a moment, and I'm not sure which one of us asked, "So what should we do?" but one of us did and we both agreed that there really was nothing to do, but there was a deep urge underneath our conversation to do something. We knew, I knew, there was nothing to be done. The birds were too young to have a shot of making it. But that felt like an excuse to myself, even though I knew it was the truth.

I grew up watching Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin, and the like. They'd come across nature taking its course, and they'd have to let it be, but it still wasn't easy for them. I got that more so from Jeff Corwin, I guess. At least, that's how I remember it. There was an episode of Crocodile Hunter where Steve and his wife, Terri, went out into the brush and rescued little creatures, like geckos and snakes, from the wildfires, taking them from smoldering trees to some area that was clear of the fires. There were emergencies, times when things went wrong in nature. When it wasn't nature taking its course, but us throwing nature off its course. Then it was all right to rescue.

But nests fall from trees, and baby birds get abandoned. Right?