Baby Bird Splat

broken egg mess on the sidewalk
I have the unfortunate knack, occasionally, to witness things I’d rather not witness. The worst of which was a few years ago in Texas and I’m still trying to forget it and don’t tell the story at all to anyone.

Another event happened one morning when I left my South Philly apartment for class in the mid 1980s. A neighbor down the street was on the second story roof of his row home threatening to do harm to himself with a large carving knife. The police and firemen below mulled around on the street. His mother pleaded with him.

As I made my way to the intersection he decided to wrap the coaxial TV cable around his neck and jump from the roof. All that happened to him was he fell into a tree below and the cable pulled away from the house. I still wonder if he really thought that he was doing himself in or just wanted to make it look like he was trying.

My most recent thing-I’d-rather-not-see happened the other day as I was pruning branches on the bush in front of the house where caterpillars were making a nest. I clipped the dying branch and pulled it away and saw something drop and heard it go smack on the sidewalk.

I looked down and saw the remains of a bird’s egg with the partially formed bird creature splatted on the slate. I grimaced.  I hadn’t seen the good nest holding a single egg inside above the offending caterpillar nest.

I’m extremely weak-kneed when it comes to killing creatures (mice) and especially when it’s baby-to-be-bird or other young creature. This was especially painful coming two months after 2-week effort to document a different nest in the back of our house earlier in the summer:

Purple Finch Babies from mcglinch on Vimeo.

I grabbed a broom and quickly swept the mess into the ground cover below the bush. I’lll keep watching this video to try to sweep the memory of the baby bird splat away.

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7 Responses to Baby Bird Splat

  1. I’m so sorry you had to experience a similar situation, twice! How traumatic for you. 🙁 The illustration is intriguing, I really like it a lot. Brings back my own memories of similar bird experience that I too will never tell, and will soon never forget. le sigh.

    PS the revamped site looks fantastic!!!

  2. mcglinch says:

    Thanks and thanks, Jess! We must work hard to hide those things from our mind.

    Good luck with your show this month!

    • Awww thanks! I tell ya, it’s been a rough month getting ready for that show. GAH!

      Agreed. Whenever I think of that fateful day, I get all weird-feeling inside. Some things should not be remembered.

      OH FYI…:) As I was writing this comment, I happened to yawn a really big morning wake-up type yawn. The kind where one has to close the eyes cause the mouth is taking up the entire face. Yeah…so just discovered I could type without looking at the keyboard. Yay me!

      • mcglinch says:

        It’s a special day when a new special talent is discovered. Hold your head high today! When passersby note your new-found confidence on the street, just nod and say, “yeah, that’s right, I can closed-eyes-yawn and type.” They will be thankful for the tale they’ll have to tell at the dinner table tonight.

  3. kristen says:

    In 1998 we bought our first house and experienced the first of several baby bird related traumas. An extremely young baby bird had fallen from his nest in the holly bush next to our front door. Joe scooped up the baby bird and put it back into his next, but he fell out again. Joe put him back in once more and I vowed never to check again to see if he made it. My point is baby birds can make you really sad if you think too much about them too much.

    But hey? That story about the guy falling in the tree? That made me chuckle and I don’t think it was supposed to. So now I feel bad about that. Damn.

  4. mcglinch says:

    Don’t feel bad about chuckling, Kristen. There’s nothing wrong with chuckling! If something makes you laugh, laugh.

    At the time, I was disturbed by it — that there were out-of-control people living all around me. But now I think of it as one of those things, like in Shaun of the Dead where stuff just happens in the background that’s horrible but it’s oddly amusing because it’s happening in the background.

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