The Fledgling

How incredibly vulnerable we are when we first set out by ourselves in the world.

Two days ago, I found a baby bird huddling inside the ledge of my pool filter, where the water covered his stick-like little feet.

I went into that sense of panic and fear I feel when I see helpless living things in danger in my pool. Usually, that means baby iguanas or lizards or worse - tiny infant frogs, desperately paddling about for some dry spot of purchase. The lizards often leap onto a pool noodle and cling to it like a lifeboat. I try and guide the noodle to the top step of the pool so they can jump off. Sometime that works. Sometimes, they leap into the water as I push it. Most of the time, if I arrange that noodle as a bridge to the steps, and they eventually come to it on their own.

But this little bird was trapped. I was able to scoop him off the filter ledge by hand, and set him down on the ground while I found a box to contain him. He was not a hatchling, but still a baby, and seemed stunned but alive, his little beak opening and closing, trying to take a breath, or speak or do whatever bird do with their beaks.

Fledgling Catbird in the Box. A little battered, but alive.

I brought him to the Key West Wildlife Center, where a staff person said they would take care of him. When I asked what kind of bird he was, I was told he looked like a Catbird. The next day, I followed up and was told he was still being treated and probably would be let go tomorrow.

Tomorrow? That seemed way too soon for that baby. The bird was not a baby, I was told. It was a fledging. Old enough to be out of the nest, and now learning how to survive out of it.

I checked back two days after I brought him to the Center and was glad to hear he was still in recovery and being observed. “He’s hanging in there,” the man on the phone said. “Definitely hanging in here but not ready to go yet.”

A fledgling. How incredibly vulnerable we are when we first set out ourselves into the world.

I have been writing about a time when I eighteen and left to make my way in the world. I was a fledgling, like this little guy and met with the same kind of misfortune he did. Afterwards, I stayed on the safe ledges of life for a long time. A kind of extended nest of my own making.

How long does it take to heal that gap between the thrill of spreading your wings and the crushing defeat of falling down? How many of us, especially women, head out toward the clouds and fall off the branch, or get caught by a hawk or mistake a window for the sky and end up stunned and gasping for breath?

I did. In my book, Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance, I wrote about the long journey back to myself after being taken down by a hawk in the form of a man who feasted on me and then dropped what was left on the sidewalk. I had to learn to get up again and walk my way back on my own. I know how difficult it is to recover enough to fly again.

All it takes is finding some young creature who has taken a fall to send me back to wanting to catch myself before I fell.

But of course, that’s not possible.

I still see that tiny bird in the box, shaken but insistent on hanging in there and that ragged place in my heart reminds me of who I once was. My hope is that the fledgling finds the strength to not only fly, but to sing again.

That’s the trick, little bird, surviving and not losing your song. I remind myself of that again and again.