A column idea that couldn't fly away (08/08/07)

Sometimes you struggle to find an idea for a column.

Sometimes they fall in your lap.

It was lunchtime one day last week. I'd made myself a wrap, a reflection of the low-carb culture that prevails at our house these days and was reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini, a marvelous though very sad book.

I was almost finished - with the wrap, not the book - when my wife arrived.

No sooner had she sat down, after making her own wrap, than she asked, "Is that a dead bird?"

I raised my nose out of the book and surveyed the back yard.

We have four bird feeders visible from the kitchen table. One with thistle, one with sunflower seeds, two with a mix.

Only one, an Audubon Society feeder, had a bird at it.

"Is that a dead bird?" she asked again.

And as I looked at the back of the sparrow on the Audubon feeder I realized that it hadn't moved since I sat down for lunch.

"Let me check it out," I said, reassuringly.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Poke it with a stick," I said, which did nothing to reassure her at all.

Now, you have to keep in mind that one of the rules of guy-dom is that when you're faced with the unknown, the first order of business is to poke it with a stick. After that, you're on your own; but first you have to poke it with a stick.

So I did.

And, much to my surprise, the bird moved.

While three of the four feeders were pretty much full, this one was nearly empty. And a hungry sparrow had stuck its head into one of the openings way too far, reaching for some bit of millet or corn or sunflower, and had gotten stuck.

So, there I was. It's lunch hour. I've poked a bird with a stick and have determined that the crazy thing has wedged its head into a birdfeeder. What do I do? Call a cat by ringing a dinner bell?

I did the only logical thing. I poked it again.

Again it fluttered.

Now, once upon a time, before bird flu and all that, I might have just grabbed hold of the sparrow and pulled it out.

But this is 2007, the 21st century, obviously there was only one course of action: More poking with a stick.

I pulled the top off the feeder, apologized to the sparrow for the slim pickings, and applied the stick to its head, as gently as possible but with the goal of getting it free of its predicament.

I poked. And I poked again. And I poked again. I seemed to be making some progress, and then the bird became still.

Omigosh, I thought, I've broken its neck.

I shifted my attention to the outside of the feeder and poked the bird with my stick. It jumped.

Hallelujah, I thought, it's still alive. Time to poke it in the head again!

Which I did.

This time, with a somewhat different angle from the stick, I poked, poked again, poked a third time, and the bird's head came free.

It flew away with nothing in the way of a thank-you.

And while I think I did the right thing, I must admit that I woke up a few days later with a heck of a headache.

Maybe someone larger than me in the scheme of things has been poking me with a stick.

At any rate, I'll tell you this: We're keeping that feeder full from now on.

I don't think the sparrow wants to go through that again. Neither do I.[[In-content Ad]]