a bird's life

Yesterday I was up here in my little office where I am writing this when I heard a crash downstairs.

I went down and our cat, Luke, had knocked over a huge vine on a trellis just by the back window at the bottom of the back staircase. (We have stairs just inside the front door and another set in the back of the house at the end of our kitchen, sitting room area.)

I went outside to find Bern so we could clean it up (she did most of the cleaning since all the plants--that have come in from the deck for the cold--are her domain). Lukie wouldn't stay away from the window no matter how we shooed him away and when the plant was upright again, Bern realized there was a bird trapped between the window and the storm window/screen contraption.

I went outside and realized the storm window had a three inch gap at the top and that's how the bird got inside. The cat had freaked him/her out so much that she/he couldn't figure out how to find the gap at the top. There was a gap at the bottom where the bird could escape because the screen was down and the storm window up there. But again, the cat had the bird freaked out.

I shut Luke up in our bedroom and Bern put some of our parakeet's seeds on the window bottom and eventually the bird came down and flew away.

In the midst of all the unspeakable horror of war and pestilence and unrest in the world, giving a bird back his/her life is surely not worth mentioning.

But it felt wonderful to know the bird would live on and not die in our window.

Little things that you can control matter so much in the face of global things you can't control

Ponder that and notice the little things of life a little more. Turn off CNN and never turn on Fox News and be present to life's small gifts and wonders.

That's what I intend to do, more and more.