I just got home from work. I don’t live far so it only takes minutes on a good day. This evening I was sitting at a traffic light. For once I wasn’t even impatient. I would be home in a couple of minutes. I don’t have to work tomorrow. My time, right now, is mine. Relax. I looked over to my right and something caught my eye. I looked down at the sidewalk where I saw a little bird moving it’s head in a very abnormal way. I’m no Dr. Doolittle but it just seemed odd I guess.
The light changed, the car in front of me was moving so I started moving. But I looked back at the bird. And there were actually two birds. One was very obviously dead. The other appeared, to my untrained eye, to be trying to nudge the bird up, or awake, or please respond.
The death of the one bird was not nearly as sad to me as the other bird trying to move it in to living.
I couldn’t help but wonder, does the bird understand?
I have no idea how animals communicate or if any or all of them can or can not.
But we can. I thought how it might be, to not be able to communicate about something so emotional. Just from the few seconds I saw of that bird it appeared emotional to me, to the bird. But we have that ability. To communicate. Blessing. And curse. That it is.
We can talk to one another. We can explain to one another. We can express, describe, soothe, tell jokes, comfort. We can ask questions. We can say whatever it is we need to, want to, should and/or shouldn’t say.
But that bird….
I just don’t know if he could or couldn’t. Or if he understood. I guess if I was a bird I would know the way of the birds.
But since I’m not I guess I only know the way of us. And even at that, I’m not all that sure of it.
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