The smallest creature
My friend wanted to adopt a dog – she’s been wanting this for some time now and it just so happens she found one during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. So I met her at the owner’s house to see about this dog. The subdivision was a gated community with cookie cutter mansions each with a green lawn and a concrete driveway. Except for a slight alteration in style, you’d never know which house was yours.
As all adventures happen, we drove up to the wrong house and tried to figure out how to get their attention since there was the chance of a baby sleeping and we didn’t want to disturb.
So we sat in our respective cars out front, then I got out and sat on the lawn and spoke with my friend who was wearing green protective gloves. I spoke to her through the open passenger door. She text, emailed and tried to call the woman.
Then I went to poke around the house to see if there was a way to get her attention without ringing the doorbell. I went up to the front door and right when I walked up a humming bird was beating its wings not in frenzied fashion like they do but more outstretched wings like they don’t do and then the bird collapsed, stood up, wobbled but wouldn’t flap its wings.
Right then the door opened and a man said, “Can I help you?” I explained about the dog. “I don’t have a dog for sale.” Hmm, I gave him the address, and he agreed it was his address but there was no dog. Then my friend called out from the car that she had the wrong address. So I excused myself but pointed out the bird to him. He looked down and said, “It happens all the time because of the windows.” I looked up at the giant hexagon window that was above the door, one story up.
There are so many fixes I’ve come up with – reflecting tape, a mirror, a crystal hung to catch the light – so many ways that would stop birds from flying into the mirror and being stunned or worse dying because the builder placed a very large window up so high where there would be no activity or light inside to ward off a bird.
I know for certain the first day I came home and saw a hummingbird at my doorstep would be the day I fixed it.
