When I Said Hello

I heard something in the grass behind me and turned to see a juvenile Grackle standing under the slow spray of the sprinkler. Silver drops of water ran off its greyish-brown back.

It froze as I turned my head, it's dark eyes riveted on me. Its mother called from a branch overhead, but she didn't sound alarmed. I smiled and said hello to both of them and slowly returned to what I was doing, periodically looking back to see what the young one was doing.

At first it just stood there taking a shower. Although it was morning, the sun already hot, and the water clearly felt good enough to warrant approaching this kneeling man, who I am confidant this bird and its mother had seen before.

Then came the bath. After a long time under the sprinkler, the young one hopped over to the bird bath, up some nearby rocks and into the shallow pool, keeping one eye on me each step of the way. I didn't have to watch. I could hear it splashing: at first tentatively and then more luxuriantly. And this went on for some time, the mother chirping from the tree all the while.

And then came the drink. As I turned to watch the bath in action, the young one stood up and began drinking, standing in the pool bending down low enough to put its beak in the water, guzzling beaks full by looking up to the sky. The mother had flown off briefly but was now back in the branches chirping.

And then the young one hopped out of the birdbath and looked at me and shook the water from its feathers and fluttered its wings. And its head jerked to one side, and the bird fell over, tumbling down the limestone rocks to the base of the birdbath, landing upside down, convulsing its wings, its head jerking from one side to the other.

The mother began chattering quite loudly. The young one tried to stand up but instead rolled upside down again, flapping and jerking violently. The mother began flying from branch to branch, calling loudly. Other Grackles arrived from yards nearby. They all called frantically from the branches as I stood beneath them in stunned silence.

In its struggle, the young one rolled into a shallow puddle next to the sprinkler, and now it was getting wet and muddy. I picked it up in a cotton rag and moved it away from the water and set it upright and calmed its flapping with my hands around its wings. The noise of the birds calling overhead was deafening. Blue Jays began crying, too. Trudy was watching from the sidewalk.

I let go of the young one, and it stood there momentarily, its dark eyes riveted on me. And then its head rolled back and it began flapping wildly again. It rolled up against an old log of Pecan wood where Sammy used to sit. Its frantic flapping slowed. It never again stood up. And eventually it lay there dead.

At some point, the other birds flew away. I don't remember when. But the mother stayed all day, flying off every 20 minutes or so and returning with something new in her beak to entice her young one to stand up, chirping cheerfully as she had earlier in the day.

All the rest of the morning, all afternoon, until the sun was setting in the west, long after the young one had died and I had buried it next to Sammy's log, the mother would come back beak full and chirp from the branch above the place where I was working in the morning when I first had said hello to the two of them.

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