A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a new resident in the local park where I do most of my running during the week. I might not have noticed the bird at all except that she was keeping herself firmly ensconced in one spot on the very edge of the running trail, where the crushed gravel meets the grass. She was also screeching and tittering at me as I ran toward her, all while holding her wings akimbo and her tail feathers fluffed as high in the air as she could manage, doing the broken-wing dance. I'm no ornithologist, by any means, so I don't know what kind of bird this was, only that her wingspan was probably just over a foot, and that her brown-and-white markings would have made it hard for me to see her from very far away if she weren't trying so hard to get my attention. However, I knew enough about birds to guess what these not-so-subtle signals indicated, and my hunch was confirmed on my next loop around the trail, when I saw something sitting inconspicuously in the bird's makeshift nest carved out of the gravel and dirt and grass.
One egg. A single smooth egg, no more than a couple of inches in length, beige-colored and mottled with interconnected black spots. Sort of a minimalist Jackson Pollack effect. But Mama Bird was doing all she could to keep predators and perceived predators away from her prized offspring-to-be.
My first immediate worry was about what would happen the next time that the mowers came around to keep the grass at a manageable length. There's no way that someone riding a farm-sized mower would pay any attention to such a small package or its stalwart guardian. But I certainly didn't know of anything I could do--if I moved the egg, would its mother reject it, as I'd always heard? was there some reason that the mother had built her nursery on the ground instead of in the trees that were mere yards away? As much as I wanted to protect my new discoveries, I also didn't want to mess with the wisdom of nature, so I left Mama and Egg alone.
It turns out that my worry probably shouldn't have been about the mowers at all, but about the unseasonably cold snap our area has faced over the last week and a half. We've had frost on the ground several mornings--what would that do to such an exposed nest? I shouldn't have worried; over the next few days, not only were Mama and Egg still camped out on the path, but they were joined by two more eggs, and finally, a fourth. Mama became more and more vigilant, harder to scare away from her assigned post.
I was out of town most of last week, so I didn't know what to expect when I went for my first run at the trail in a week this morning. I was pleased to discover that Mama was still there, as were her eggs--but only three of them. I didn't see any baby birds squawking for nourishment, so I didn't know what might have happened to the fourth egg.
I figured it out when I was circling back to the spot where Mama's nest lay, and it took me a few seconds to realize what I was seeing: a huge coal-black crow with its neck extended to gobble up one, two, three eggs for its breakfast. Mama bird stood sounding her alarm from a couple of feet away, to no avail. I tried my best to summon my speed and scare the interloper away, but by that point, it was too late. No more eggs.
Stunned, I racked my brain for what lesson The Universe might be trying to tell me in all this. The only thing I've been able to come up with so far is,
MIND YOUR OWN GODDAMNED BUSINESS
but that's too depressing even for me.
