Wren

People talk about the circle of life. What we usually don’t say out loud is that the circle is a circle of life and death.

Yesterday evening as I was coming back from a trip to the compost pile, I heard the sounds of fluttering in the garage where two Carolina wrens had made a nest. Wrens are tiny, loud, soft rust-brown birds with their tail feathers cocked skyward. My wife and I had watched them flying in and out during the past few weeks. We had seen and heard them trilling from the wire leading out to the garage.

I looked into the shadows and saw a wren flapping frantically, spinning round and around upside down from one extended leg. As I got very close, I could see that the wren had gotten itself entangled in something from its nest. It must have been struggling for some time. The wren’s tail feathers had been beaten off.

I reached out my hand, closing it gently and firmly around the tiny body to try to calm it. I carefully snipped away the threads that had been wrapped tightly around the wren’s leg. The threads looked and felt like they might have come from some bits of plastic twine that the wrens must have used to line their nest.

I carried the wren out into the middle of our back yard and put it down in the grass. The leg that had been caught stuck straight out behind the wren. The wren flapped its wings, but it could not fly. The wren seemed as if it might be otherwise intact, but it could only bounce awkwardly over the grass. It was alive, but without its tail feathers and a severely dislocated leg it could not survive.

I placed the wren at the edge of the lawn on a bed of some dried surprise lily leaves near the peonies bushes and put down a small saucer of water near the wren. I set a five gallon bucket upside down over the helpless bird, still breathing and blinking its eyes. I weighted the bucket with a couple of bricks and I hoped, at least, that the wren could rest in relative safety and the dim light.

My wife was visiting family, so I rode my bicycle over to a friend’s house to ask him what he thought I should do. We talked of ways of putting the wren out of its suffering, but nothing seemed possible in the moment.

Night was falling when I returned home. I saw two mourning doves sitting on the wire near where the wren was resting. I didn’t raise the bucket to see how the wren was doing. I went inside and had a late supper. Eventually I went to bed.

In the morning, I went outside to check on the wren. The wren had passed away during the night. I buried the wren’s body in the earth near where its life had ended.

I must tell you that I felt more sorrow over the suffering of this one wren than I have felt about any other living being in a long time. It seemed all out of proportion, but perhaps not. It was life, however small. Yet if I felt about the suffering of each life in the world all together the way I felt about this wren, I could not live.

I set a bit of broken brick over the place where the wren’s body lay. I took some photos of the moonflowers by the garage.

And now I will not tell you more of my thoughts. I have told you what happened. You can try to find your own meaning if you want to.

As for me, I have some work to do and I’m glad for that. Sparrows are flying back and forth to a neighbor’s feeder. A robin was grooming its feathers earlier on the back fence. It looks as if it might rain again.

And this is just one small story in the circle of life and death.