Broken Wing

I was probably sixteen. I could have been seventeen, though. I was at the point that teenagers reach where they've stopped listening to advice and started giving it; where they have a desire to tell everyone around them how smart they are, how witty they are, how mature they are.

Sitting at home one summer, (reading or watching or playing, I don't remember which) my older sister Stephanie came in from the backyard. She held something in her hand, gently, and looked carefully at it.

'I found a bird,' she said. 'It's hurt.'

I stood and walked over to her to see for myself. Not that I doubted her; my sister was as good with animals and nature as anyone I knew. She, more than any of our family, preferred the outdoors and the solitude she could find when away from people and the noise of civilization.

I looked in her hand and saw it, a small bird not yet ready to fly. It had the sickly look of a baby animal just born. Eyes only sometimes open, peeping and screaming in pain and confusion.

Its wing was broken. I poked at her hand and watched him move, unnatural in his position. 'Yeah...he looks hurt.'

My expert opinion.

'I'm going to take him to Jeanna,' she said, referring to a family friend of ours who had once owned an exotic petshop; as good as a vet, sincerely. 'She can probably help.'

'More than we can,' I replied, sitting back down. She filled a small plastic pet carrier with scraps of newspaper and set the bird down into it. I could hear it still, noisily protesting its fate, as she walked out the front door and to her car. I watched her drive off.

When she came back, still with the carrier, I was surprised by my surprise. I suppose I had expected the bird to stay with Jeanna, or for her to take it to someone else. Maybe she would have helped put it down, or taken it to care for herself.

The bird was to be Stephanie's charge until it healed, she told me. They had splinted the wing and would wait for it to mend. Then, whole and happy, the bird would be released back into the wild and live out its life to the fullest. A happy ending to a short story.

I've always liked animals, but not really in a participatory way. I like animals the way people like art, as things to be appreciated, but not to be taken home. There have been some notable exceptions to this feeling, but overall I have always felt animals were more to be appreciated than personally cared for. Whenever I go to the pet store to pick up more dog food, or to get crickets for Amanda's gecko, I can't help but stop by the small lizards or rodents. The way they move and look about their surrounding is fascinating to me, but never fascinating enough that I want to be responsible for their care.

That said, I am very soft-hearted regarding their well-being. If I find a spider in my house, I will leave it alone. If Amanda discovers it, I will catch it and put it outside. I've always felt that we are responsible for animals, that we are caretakers. Animals are to be cared for, never hunted, never hurt. And I've felt this way for as long as I can remember.

Which is why it was so hard for me to kill the little bird.

It had been a week. Stephanie had cared for the bird, feeding it watery meal through a syringe, changing its paper, and tenderly checking its wing every day, every hour she was awake. The bird was not doing well, however. It was growing thinner and more sickly and its cries of pain were becoming harder to ignore, from anywhere in the house. The wing itself refused to heal.

She approached me again after she had called Jeanna. The bird wasn't strong enough to heal, she told me. It only was barely surviving through its suffering, and there was little chance it would ever fly or live on its own. If it ever tried to fly, it would cause itself so much pain that it would be debilitated. It would spend its entire life as an invalid, fighting against its instincts to soar.

The bird had to be put down. It had to have its pain ended, but she couldn't do it. She asked me if I would be able to. She wanted to know if I could help her help the little bird to no longer be in pain.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I can do it.'

A person may know much, but still know very little. It's a truth that is very difficult for people to hear, especially as a teenager. There is no substitute for experience; not even in particular tasks, but experience in life and in living. When you have done much and lived long, you come to know yourself in a way you only think you do in your adolescence. You learn your limits, you learn what you can do. You learn what you absolutely cannot do. But, this was me: Brash, overconfident, eager to help.

I took the little bird from its carrier as Stephanie said goodbye to him. She left the room and I walked with him to the hearth and the fireplace. On the red bricks by the glass screen, there was a large, flat piece of wood that looked like it had been cut from a tree trunk. I took the bird and set him gently onto the wood, on the red bricks, talking to him, apologizing to him. I reached for the small camping hatchet we kept nearby.

The little bird was crying.

I tried to think of the best way, the quickest way, to do it. I could chop his neck with the hatchet, the way you would a chicken, but the bird was small enough and the hatchet light enough that I feared I would miss; the idea was for there to be no pain. The little bird had had enough of that.

I settled on the plan of placing the hatchet carefully over its neck, then pressing my weight down quickly. I would sever its head, I thought as clinically as I could, quickly and cleanly. There would be no pain for the bird, and my task would be done.

I placed the hatchet over the bird's neck, nearly touching it, said I was sorry, and leaned.

I had miscalculated the position. Blood spurted from the place where I had cut the bird, and it snapped its head back and forth in pain. Blood spattered onto my hands and flowed up onto the blade, dripped onto the wood and the bricks. I had severed its artery, but not the bones, not the neck. The bird cried and I panicked. I came down again, again, watching the little bird writhe and scream. My own mouth was gaping open, horrified and voiceless. The moment lasted and lasted.

The moment lasted, and lasted.

I saw my sister later that day, delivered the tiny bird's body to her in a small box she had given me so that she could bury it. She thanked me for what I had done. I told her that it had not gone well. She began to cry and asked me not to tell her.

That was my last summer at home.

I've always felt that, no matter what becomes of my life, no matter what I make of myself, no matter how my children fare in their lives, that I will have to answer for the little bird. Why did we not take it to a vet? Why did I offer to help when I knew I couldn't do it? Why didn't we give it more time?

I imagine that I will stand and say, 'Look at these great things I have done. I was honest and kind, I was helpful and generous, and I taught my children to be the same.' And I will be asked, 'What of the bird?'

'I don't know,' I'll answer.