Dead Baby Birds

SAN FRANCISCO--Only Walt Whitman could make dead baby birds inspiring. I should stick to sunsets, redwoods, the ocean, eagles, and volcanoes. Why do I feel compelled to try and make sense of the dead baby birds Nature has--literally--cast into my path lately?

Is it part of being human? Do you feel it, too? We read. We write. We interpret symbols. How can we help but try to interpret circumstances that touch on sacred mysteries like new life and sudden death? Well, you tell me what you make of it all. I'll start with just the facts.

I work on an island where Western Gulls nest. One day, my coworker Kat radios me to come down to the dock; there's something "of interest to a birdwatcher." "Good," I say, "I was just now looking at a seagull chick and its dead brother" (which had fallen from the nest's ledge). Can't wait to see something less morbid. And sure enough, rangers are gathered to watch Mama Mallard and her seven newborn ducklings paddling about in the bay, then hopping onto a floating dock to rest. So cute!

Later that afternoon, after most of us have returned to other duties, tragedy strikes. "I watched one die!" says Karla, describing how a duckling had gotten pinned between dock and pylon. Not an hour passes before John observes the exact same situation. And then there were five.

Two men make the dock fast, that no more ducklings should come to an untimely end. But then Ino, who works for the boat company, moves the dock elsewhere. The ducks don't take to the new location. Without any resting place, are they doomed? We never see the ducklings again.

Mary, the security guard, listens to our tale of woe with tearless eyes. "I think," she says, a little hesitantly, "that's why they have so many."

Another day: A child sees my coworker Russell collecting gull eggs from nests that lie too close to tourist paths. "Isn't that murder?" she asks. "No," he replies, "it's wildlife management."

And what of the raven Art catches "tenderizing" a gull chick in front of a whole group of visitors, the baby swallow Dan reports crawling from a fallen egg "only to succumb to an ant attack"?

I would consign such incidents to the back of my mind were not circumstances conspiring to bring them forward: I'm walking with my husband by the park near our home when he exclaims, "Hey! That thing just hit me!" I look down and see a naked nestling dead in the street. While I'm still grossing out at the grease spot on his shoulder, we hear "splat!" and another one hits the street. I look wildly up at the trees and want to flee this accursed place. My husband, more curious than I, stands pondering. We aren't sure what to make of it: could a cowbird nestling be thrusting forth the rightful young? Are parents clearing the nest of already-dead babies? Has the wind simply cast out the remnants of an abandoned nest? I'm not sure, but I suspect working at Alcatraz has warped my sense of humor. I can't stop laughing.

Those are the events. I lay them before you. Can you simply shrug off the dead baby birds pelting us from all sides?

For myself, once the laughter subsides, I'm back to that human desire to make meaning out of chaos, find a message in coincidence. Somehow, when I look inside, I do find peace, I find the answer to the riddle of the dead baby birds. But I cannot explain it to you.

Here's where I call in my man Walt:
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots. . ."*

That is to say, the dead baby bird may be the real lucky duckie!

Should you object, I ask you to search your soul for an alternate answer that would satisfy you. But seek it in Nature, not indoors, for, in Whitman's words again,
"The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key. . ."**

May all our souls rest in peace, alongside and together with those of dead baby birds.


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*Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass, New York: Modern Library, 2001 (after the 1892 "deathbed edition"), p. 41.

**Ibid, p. 109.