Woodpecker Down

 I recognize that, were you to judge based solely on the content of my blog posts, you might come to the conclusion that the setting in which the Birdhouse Treehouse resides is not terribly creature-friendly. What with the fishkill, the tree roach massacre, the self-abusing cardinal and the possum fatality, it may appear that any fauna within a 2 mile radius is living on borrowed time. But I assure you that is not the case. I am fairly certain that the vast majority of living things nearby achieve a relatively long and fruitful life. But for whatever reason, I feel far more compelled to comment on the occasional disasters since to me, they are far more comment-worthy than the day-to-day successes.

So today, I will be adding yet another item to my litany of animal mishaps. This one took place sometime last week as I stood on my back porch in the late afternoon.

Now you'll note in the photo at the top left corner of this page that the Birdhouse Treehouse has a large round window in the center of it. It is the only window in the structure not shielded by the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees and therefore, is the lone source of unobstructed sunlight. It gives the interior an open, airy feeling and without it, the place would exist in a dull, constant shade. So you can hardly blame me when, upon exiting the previous evening, I failed to return the roman shade to its usual position that covers the inside of the window.

It was only upon hearing an incredibly loud thump that I realized what I had done. The bird fell from the sky like a rock.

Once, when I was in college, I once saw a girl pass out mid-stride. She'd been drinking steadily for the previous two days and on her way into the movie theater, her body simply gave out. One minute she was walking and the next, she was falling face-first onto the concrete parking lot without even trying to break her fall. It was a shocking and frightening thing to see, this total lack of self-preservation. And I was instantly reminded of it as the bird hit the ground.

My dogs, being the curious beasts that they are, immediately went to investigate. I quickly pulled them away, getting only the briefest of glimpses of the small unmoving body in the grass, but after putting the dogs inside the house, I returned to investigate.

It was a young red-bellied woodpecker which, if you haven't seen them, are really something to behold. They have loud black-and-white striped wings and a glaringly bright swath of red that begins at the top of their beaks and extends all the way around to the back of their heads. His wings were fully outstretched, displaying the extraordinary intricacies of the striping of his feathers, his forehead planted firmly in the grass, his beak beneath his chest. My first thought upon seeing him was to note the similarity of his posture to a reverse angle of the crucifixion. And although I stood there for several minutes, he never moved a muscle. I feared he had broken his neck.

I immediately went up into the treehouse and lowered the shade, filled with regret and feeling like a kid trying to hide the evidence of some transgression. I surmised that, at that time of day, the sunlight hits the window in a way that makes it difficult to see, especially when you're flying however fast birds fly and looking for somewhere interesting to land. With that danger mitigated, I then went to my computer and searched "Do birds get knocked out?" and was relieved to discover that indeed they do. There was still hope.

When I went back down and looked closer at the bird, I was thrilled to detect his shallow breathing. Almost imperceptible but there, a tiny up and down motion. I planted myself at the nearby patio table to stand guard and make certain no errant cat came along to take advantage of him while he was indisposed. Nearly twenty minutes later, he moved his head. Not much, but it was something. And it told me that perhaps he hadn't broken his neck after all, so I jumped into action.

After reading a number of wildlife websites, I knew what to do. I donned my gardening gloves and placed him on a soft towel inside a dark cardboard box then added a small bowl of water and a few crumbs of bread. I placed the box on top of a bench that sits beneath the treehouse so he was protected by its shade and close enough to see the tree. And periodically I would check on him, drawn to the box by some weird magnetic curiosity but afraid to scare him with my looming proximity. All-in-all, it took nearly two hours for him to recover enough to fly away.

The red-bellied woodpecker

So now we arrive at the part of the story where I normally tie it all together with something that vaguely applies to my human readers. And with total disregard for being viewed as predictable, I will do exactly that. You see, the message I took from this little encounter is this—sometimes, shit happens that's really hard to bounce back from. Sometimes, it takes a while to recover. And while you're lying there, flat on your face in the middle of your proverbial WTF? there are going to be people who just assume you're done for. And they'll leave you for dead.

But fact is, we're more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. Just because we're down doesn't mean we're done. And truth be known, maybe all anyone needs is a little time in a dark, quiet box.

To the possum that died behind my fence

You were a very large possum. Impressive, even. How long does it take for a possum to grow that size? And what did you see during your time here on Earth? According to my Google search results, you could have been up to eleven years old. To me it hardly seems like enough time, but for you it was an entire life.

Perhaps you watched from a tree nearby when, six years ago, we renovated the house and reclaimed the yard. Maybe you were horrified when I removed the four giant ham radio antennas covered in vines and growth that the previous owner had left sitting in the back—it was probably a good hiding place. Maybe you were the one that always ran along our newly installed 8-foot wood fence and drove my dogs crazy. Do you remember me? I was the one with the flashlight. You and I had a moment a couple of months back. 

I always wondered about you; where you stayed during the day, where you went at night. Ever since that evening I caught you on the front porch, hoping to finish up the dry cat food I regularly put out for the stray orange tomcat. It was a funny moment for me; I thought the cat had finally climbed into the little bed I put under the lounge chair for him. So imagine my surprise when I bent over to look and discovered you there, crouched on top of that cute, fluffy bed in all your prehistoric glory, or repulsiveness, depending on who you ask.

I actually let out a bit of a girlie scream as I stood up, which surprised me because that isn't like me at all. But it's funny what you do in those random moments of terror. You learn something about yourself when there's no time to think, just react. Had you been any other kind of creature, I suspect you'd have overturned that lounge chair and torn a path through the flower bed in an effort to get away. But you just hunkered down and waited as I frantically ducked back inside, hyperventilating until my fear was overtaken by curiosity.

You might not know it, but I watched from the bathroom window as you left.  You poked your pointy nose out from under the lounge chair and purposefully looked both ways, like a child who'd been taught how to cross the street. You took a few cautious steps to extricate yourself from the cushions of the cat bed, then burst off the porch in a surprising display of speed. You ran faster than I ever thought you could, leaving a path of swaying phlox in your wake as you cut through the flower bed and dropped into the creek.

From then on, I thought of you every time I encountered the empty cat bowl. The tomcat never eats all his dry food since I've started spoiling him with the canned stuff, a fact that never fails to make my husband roll his eyes. Since then, I've also kept a flashlight out beside the back door and whenever the dogs would start barking, I'd go get it in hopes of catching another glimpse of you.

So it was with a deep sense of sadness that I went about disposing of your remains. But truth is, you had grown quite stinky after a couple of days and it had to be done. I assume you were hit by a car since your body was beside the road out behind our back fence, grimacing in a way that showed all of your fifty teeth. I have since learned that's the most teeth of any land mammal and it made me feel bad about my own disinclination to floss. The good news is that I only discovered your demise after finding a baby possum in the yard. One of your progeny, perhaps? A teenager, I learned, apparently looking for a territory to call his own. I suppose our yard is now free.

But the truth is, you got me thinking about dying. Maybe it's like I've heard it said—in the end we're all just meat. I will, at some point, be placed in my own equivalent of a Hefty bag and put away so as not to offend the living with the smell of my decay. And when that happens, hopefully a long time from now, I pray that like me, someone will take just a few moments to say "I remember you."