A Tiny Heartbeat

It's late, and I'm still working too many shifts.

But I thought I'd share a little story.

A few days ago, I rescued a fledgling robin from my cat. We have a cage with a specialized light that we use when we find injured birds or sparrows, should we ever get around to breeding them. I found his nest, but it was too high to put him back. He was uninjured; stunned from the fall and the kitten batting at him, but he was fine. I kept him for a night, and then I had to release him back into the wild. The SPCA wouldn't take him because he was healthy. I'm still super nervous for him; I have four outdoor cats, all of them hunters. I ended up releasing him into a bush by his nest, in hopes that his parents would be able to find him and would be able to keep feeding him until he learnt to fly a little higher. (He could do little flutters about a foot in distance.)

But during those 24 hours, he escaped twice. The first time I had to catch him with my bare hands, and holding this small, fragile bird in my hands as his wings lightly fluttered was amazing. I could feel his heartbeat. He didn't struggle, and I felt that for a moment we shared something. It was like I was holding a tiny miracle of nature and it made me pause and think about the beauty and fragility of life.

The second time, we seemed to have an accord, and he fluttered into my hand and perched there comfortably.

I'll never know if he lived or died, and I know that in the scheme of things a baby robin doesn't have that much importance, but I still can't think of him as anything but special. He made me pause and think about the relationship between mankind and nature, and about how this tiny beautiful thing that I held in my hands was so fragile and innocent and how I compared to it. I came out the bad guy, but still. It was an almost holy moment.

I have parrots and birds, but holding something wild...it was different. And yeah. I don't know how to describe it. Only that holding him, watching him, having him willingly perch on me, was amazing and incredible and awesome.

I hope he's okay. Cause little songbirds like him make the world a more beautiful and awesome place.

And I'm tired. And done my ramble.
Night All.